Associate/Assistant Vice President Fixed Income Index Design recruitment

Company overview

Markit is a leading, global financial information services company with over 2,300 employees. The company provides independent data, valuations and trade processing across all asset classes in order to enhance transparency, reduce risk and improve operational efficiency. Its client base includes the most significant institutional participants in the financial market place.

With over 1,500 institutions using our independent services as clients - including investment banks, hedge funds, asset managers, central banks, regulators, rating agencies and insurance companies - we provide round-the-clock support from our offices in London, New York, Dallas, Toronto, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Henley on Thames, Singapore, Tokyo and Sydney.

Markit is an entrepreneurial company and a fast-growing business.  We continue to expand our presence around the world and offer exciting career opportunities across sales, customer support, product management, information technology and professional services.

Department

Markit Indices

Department overview

Markit Indices is a leading independent provider of financial indices across all major asset classes. We manage and calculate Markit CDX and Markit iTraxx the world’s leading credit derivatives indices and the Markit iBoxx bond indices. Our indices are used by banks, asset managers and other financial institutions to create and manage financial products, investment risk as well as in research. 

Markit is the largest independent index provider for fixed income ETFs in Europe and America.

Our bespoke index service provides clients such as investment banks and asset managers with tailor-made indices according to their specifications. The service covers, design, test and daily calculation and publication.

Position summary

Markit is looking for a bond index designer with good industry experience to join Index Research Design as Associate/Assistant Vice President within the Fixed Income Index Design team to drive custom bond indices within Markit. The individual will represent Index Research Design in bond related activities within and outside the company. The role spans all aspects of the index creation from the specification of rules through data collection and back testing. After successful development and client sign-off, the daily calculation of the indices would be handed over in due course to the Index Production and Index Administration teams. In some cases, complex bond indices need to be calculated daily on the desk before they are transferred to production.

As part of index design, the individual will also be required to drive the relationship with main index clients. The candidate should be comfortable working in multi-system environments and be able to co-ordinate across shared projects, clients, partners and different internal teams – marketing, sales, production, IT etc.

Duties accountabilities

The individual will take ownership of the index design process for custom indices:

• Index documentation: Identification of client requirements, creation and review of index specifications and business requirements

• Index setup and calculation: develop calculation prototypes and test cases for new indices; perform test calculations and reconciliation of the calculation with clients

• Index rebalancing: universe screenings, membership list determination and implementation of new memberships

• Quality control: daily checks and testing of index calculation and output files around the release of new indices

• Data management: specify, collect and input data which entails the sourcing, cleaning and organizing of historical time-series or prices and corporate events and static data

• Back testing and index history calculation

• Good understanding of bonds, bond pricing, analytics etc.

The indices are frequently used in financial products, therefore attention to detail and accuracy are key to ensure that the indices are robust, accepted and of the highest quality. The individual will be expected to continuously identify and develop improvements to quality and stability. The individual will also contribute to the development of new benchmark and tradable indices within the Fixed Income Index Research Design team.

Index Research Design works closely with Sales, Index Production and IT. The individual will be expected to work closely with other index teams and business areas in Markit.

The individual needs to be

• Articulate

• Financially and mathematically literate

Business competencies

Education and experience

• Strong experience with bonds and bond indices, within trading, fixed income or credit research, structured products or portfolio management.

• In-depth knowledge of bonds, bond analytics and related software, data sources and treatments.

• Comfortable with standard index and index management approaches as well as more sophisticated constrained indices, sampling techniques, indices of indices, etc.

• Proven capability to create indices or use indices within financial products or asset management.

• Excellent analytical and problem solving abilities.

• Programming and database knowledge or knowledge of other asset classes are a plus.

Commercial awareness

• A high degree of awareness of the financial/resource implications of index design decisions is required.

• A keen interest in financial markets.

• The individual needs to be detail oriented to build high quality, superior products and possess the ability to understand business objectives and focus and prioritise multiple projects accordingly.

Management requirements

• The individual is expected to be a strong team player, with proven track-record of working with people that are not functionally tied to him/her, inside and outside of work.

Personal competencies

Personal impact

The individual needs to be:

• Highly motivated and eager to take the initiative and assume full responsibility for his work

• Organised, energetic and comfortable to work independently

• Creative, willing to develop and implement ad hoc solutions

Enthusiastic and proactive, focused on delivery and quality of the projects

Communication

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills with clients, team members and other teams is a must.

• Needs to be articulate and be able to represent equity indices to clients, at conferences and to other departments.

Teamwork

• Must be able to work in a team environment. As the work is across teams and client facing, other people will need to want to work with him/her. Needs to be open minded, flexible and willing to adapt to changing priorities.