Job Responsibilities and Requirements

The Senior Investment Accountant is responsible for working across certain disciplines within the Investment Accounting Department.  The Senior Investment Accountant will perform and assist in leading critical investment reporting functions, department initiatives, and analytical support for portfolio managers.  In addition, the Senior Investment Accountant is expected to assist with the development and completion of a variety of ad-hoc projects.
 

Reporting

• Assists with general ledger entry recording process across various accounting bases for investment-related items, including the preparation of supporting documentation and the reconciliation of key accounts.

• Produces and self-reviews monthly management reporting pages and packages for the parent company and insurance entities and responds to management inquiries, including development of new reporting items as required.

• Provides supporting tie-out schedules for financial statements for certain GAAP and statutory disclosures, including proactively seeking assistance with implementing reporting requirements and portfolio composition changes.

• Works closely with outsourced investment accounting provider to produce statutory schedules, meet reporting requirements, and identify necessary areas of improvement.

• Ensures accuracy of information included in financial reporting packages and management reporting deliverables for corporate parent.

• Assists with internal and external auditor requests with appropriate documentation and workpapers.

Analysis

• Understands general ledger workflow for all entities and implements best practices to optimize the monthly close process including automation, streamlining, and management-level control reports.

• Analyzes and understands drivers behind investment income through independent analytics and variance analysis, including assisting in remediating issues in a timely manner, by working across all stakeholders including third-party providers.

• Leverages systems and automation procedures to identify outliers and inconsistent results.

• Identifies and resolves instances where independent research on certain matters is necessary.

• Understands investment positions and drivers, and provides relevant disclosures required for financial reporting

• Ensures accuracy and consistency of reporting packages and board materials, and is instrumental in the development of automated quality-control solutions.

• Applies investments knowledge and previous work experience to assess reasonableness of results, and proactively questions inconsistent data sets.

Project Based Initiatives

• Actively participates in department initiatives and projects involving other areas of the broader Investments organization.

• Continually works to automate and optimize process workflows and spreadsheets.

• Leads at least one department initiative per year including developing a project plan, implementing the initiative, and monitoring the progress after implementation to determine level of success.

• Proactively drives changes and/or improvements to workflow processes.

• Leads department meetings and engages colleagues in open forum discussions.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and/or Related Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or Engineering

• CPA designation or working towards CPA designation preferred.

• 4+ years of work experience in accounting, with preferably at least a portion of that being experienced at a public accounting firm.

• Understanding of insurance investment accounting in accordance with GAAP and statutory principles.

• Familiarity of time value of money concepts such as discounting, compounding, and internal rates of return

• Understanding of fixed income instruments and concepts.

• Ability to communicate complex information in a concise and understandable manner.

• Ability to work under pressure and to provide accurate results in such situations.

• Demonstrated independence to complete tasks with minimal supervision and mentor staff members.

• Solid proficiency in Microsoft Office, particularly Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint, including competency with various Excel formulas including V- and H-lookups, pivot tables, database functions, and arrays. Experience in Microsoft Access a plus.

• Experience with Oracle and Clearwater is preferred.

• Ability to research, comprehend, and make conclusions/recommendations based upon ac