Senior Relationship Manager recruitment
The Business Need
The firm’s core target market includes all of the world’s major buy and sell side financial institutions. It serves clients across the globe and regional sales teams, based in London, Milan and Dubai (EMEA region), New York and San Francisco (Americas region) and Mumbai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo and Sydney (Asia-Pacific region). These teams are supported by regional marketing teams and by a central communications team.
Alongside the regional sales team a dedicated group of relationship managers has been established, focusing only on relationships with key asset owners / plan sponsors and consultants. There are currently 5 relationship managers operating regionally; 2 in London, 2 in New York and 1 (a mixed role) in Tokyo serving Asia Pacific. In some other markets, specifically Australia, India, Hong Kong and the Middle East, regional sales heads are also responsible for some asset owner relationships.
To support the firms ambitious growth objectives, there is now a need to enlarge the relationship management team in each of the 3 key regions; EMEA, Americas and Asia Pacific; so that we can broaden our reach and build long-term sustainable relationship with large institutional investors. Given the size and importance of the US market, increasing the share of our benchmarks is of strategic importance.
Aligned to the growth of the team, greater emphasis will be placed on more sophisticated relationship management processes and performance metrics, and in improved knowledge capture and analysis. The historic reliance on index partners to provide authoritative investment credibility and expertise will be reduced. These changes are essential as portfolio of products and services expands rapidly to encompass, innovative non market-cap indices, risk measurement tools, equity analytics and new, web based data services.
Based out of the San Francisco office, Senior Relationship Manager, US West Coast will be expected to lead relationships with asset owners and consultants within the West-Coast of US and will work closely with the rest of the Americas sales team.
Key Functions And Responsibilities
- You will be responsible for all key asset owner / plan sponsor and consultant relationships within your region and thereby increasing the firm’s market share in the benchmark space. You will also be expected to work closely with the US regional sales team, research, custom, marketing and operational staff to drive penetration of the firm’s wide portfolio of products and services.
- You will be expected to lead relationship management with Asset Owners and Consultants in your designated region within the US to proactively seek out opportunities to expand our market share. You will be responsible for understanding your client’s key issues around asset allocation, management of domestic and international equities, fixed income and other asset classes, and provide solutions as to how the firm’s broad product offerings could fit their needs. You will also be expected to indentify and attend appropriate industry conferences.
- As the firm’s role as a global thought leader develops you will be expected to share the leading edge academic thinking developed by the firm’s Advisory Board with asset owners / plan sponsors and consultants. You will help with the invitation process to our annual World Investment Forum.
- You will also be expected to work closely with the regional sales team when you identify data or licensing opportunities resulting from internally managed funds. For some asset owners / plan sponsors there will be both a relationship management and a regional sales designated contact and you will be expected to coordinate the activity and contact of both groups.
- You will be expected to feed back knowledge about key investment trends to the marketing team, executive and CEO Group.
Qualifications/ Experience/ Person
The key requirements for the role are:
- Solid experience in asset owner relationship management in the financial information services industry. Sales background would also be beneficial, alongside a working knowledge of CRM systems (The firm uses Salesforce.com).
- Excellent relationship building skills and proven experience of successful client relationship management
- Solid experience and knowledge across a range of financial instruments and asset classes; and their application in the development and execution of investment strategies
- Knowledge of the firm and competitor indices, risk and analytics products and services would be advantageous
- Good presentational and written communication skills. Evidence of ability to work at CIO level of asset owner organizations.
- Able to operate relatively independently, whilst working within a broader matrix organization structure
- Commercially focused.
- Willingness to embrace cold calling approaches to open client dialogue.
- Willing to travel extensively within the region if required
- Good contacts and a network among institutional investors and financial intermediaries in the region would be advantageous
- Must show the ability to develop and implement strategic and tactical territory account plans
- Must show the ability to win index mandates from Asset Owners/Pension Plans