Head of Middle Office Services - Fund Services, Investor Services Managing Director

Head of Middle Office Services - Fund Services, Investor Services Managing Director – C16

Location New York City / Boston / London

Reporting line Head of Fund Services, Investor Services

About Citi

Citi, the leading global bank, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citi provides consumers, corporations, governments, and institutions with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, transaction services and wealth management. Our core activities are safeguarding assets, lending money, making payments and accessing the capital markets on behalf of our clients. Citi’s Mission and Value Proposition explains what we do and Citi Leadership Standards explain how we do it. Our mission is to serve as a trusted partner to our clients by responsibly providing financial services that enable growth and economic progress. We strive to earn and maintain both our clients’ and the public’s trust by constantly adhering to the highest ethical standards and making a positive impact on the communities we serve. Our Leadership Standards is a common set of skills and expected behaviours that illustrate how our employees should work every day to be successful, strengthening our ability to execute against our strategic priorities. Diversity is a key business imperative and a source of strength at Citi. We serve clients from every walk of life, every background and every origin. Our goal is to have our workforce reflect this same diversity at all levels. Citi has made it a priority to foster a culture where the best people want to work, where individuals are promoted based on merit, where we value and demand respect for others and where opportunities to develop are widely available to all. We foster a culture of meritocracy and diversity; we value and expect respect for others; opportunities to develop are widely available to all. 51% of our employees are women and 24% of our Director’s and Managing Directors are women.

About Citi Investor Services As part of Citi’s Services business, Investor Services is a global business that provides Custody, Fund Services, Issuer Services and Securities Finance to global asset managers, pension funds, insurance companies, banks and financial intermediaries. Investor Services operates the largest custody network globally with a presence in 60+ countries.

Position summary

Do you excel at seeing and driving to the future state the Fund Services Industry despite knowing in detail the complexity of the current state in the highly data driven and complex area of Middle Office outsourcing? Are you a commercial, tech and operational change savvy business leader who doesn’t settle for good enough and pushes all to be the best? The role is to lead our Fund Services Middle Office function globally. This is global a P&l ownership role and therefore requires a deep hands-on working knowledge of the Funds business and in particular proven delivery of complex lift outs and builds for a global middle office service for asset managers. . The candidate would be required to lead, change, improve and grow materially the middle office function using technology as the enabler working hand in hand with operations, technology, our client teams and indeed our clients across a very broad US, Lux, Irish, Australian plus many smaller markets where we provide Middle Office services across existing and target clients.

The Product Manager is a senior management level position responsible for managing a broad range of Product Management employees, setting strategy and providing direction, leadership and budgetary management Additionally, this role will be responsible for the development of product plans, strategies, and tactics while coordinating product lines through product life-cycles in coordination with the broader Product Management team. Timely execution, seamless business and client change are extremely important to ensure Fund Services continues its growth path and expands its relationships with strategic clients.

Reporting to the Global Head of Fund Services, the Global Head of Middle Office services will lead strategic transformational change at the core of our business driving growth though innovation, digitisation, operating and financial performance. As part of the leadership team, this role will leverage broad Middle Office domain knowledge, deep experience influencing product, operations, design, and IT architecture change, as they lead the global function ensuring a 24/6 model delivering a single client experience across the globe.

Responsibilities

• Commercially and strategically minded with responsibility to develop and execute the Middle Office strategy that aligns to the wider InvestorServices Strategy.

• Ownership of the Global P&L for the function driving QoQ improvements via Monthly Business Review (MBR) deliverables

• Own the IBOR product globally and partner with the accounting (ABOR) and Transfer Agency teams

• Own pricing decisions for current and new Middle Office business and represent the funds business at local / regional and global deal review meetings

• Expertise in all asset classes as they relate to a Middle Office service.

• Be the difference between the think and the execution.

• Work closely with Product owners to develop and drive product roadmaps that are inclusive of business operations and technology future change needs that have a keen eye on client experience, financial performance, control, and scalability.

• Change the operating model of existing clients to drive efficiency, scale, lower risk and performance.

• Collaborate with Business, Technology, Operations, Client Services, Finance and Risk to deliver upon future state front to back business architectures for ultimately single IBOR / ABOR capabilities enabling optimized solutions with low process friction between groups and functions.

• Develop and communicate the product strategy & governance principles aimed at optimizing straight through processing and guaranteeing the timeliness, completeness, accuracy, and internal consistency of the accounting product and the resultant financial reporting, business processing, and overall client experience success.

• Manage a broad range of data and SaaS vendors that provide services / data to the business. Ensure the bank wide standards are met for all vendors including strict commercial discipline. These will include global providers like Charles River, Blackrock Aladdin, Bloomberg AIM, Simcorp etc.

• Design, build and deploy an enterprise data model that supports the end to end Middle Office business and aligns to the broader business data strategy.

• Champion continuous improvement through a Product Innovation & Governance committee - driving adoption of industry best practices, and training to ensure that the Services business is a leader in the industry for modern and digital processes.

• Leverage a strong understanding of the business strategy, key stakeholders and business capability and create solution roadmaps for clients and our teams

• Solicit business and technical specific requirements with the understanding of how those fit into the broader enterprise context bringing them to the transformation / technology teams for enablement and delivery.

• Socialize future state vision with all other Citi partners.

• Own the Middle Office portfolio of work including with our technology vendors.

• Spearhead and lead Agile initiatives and dynamically create agile squads. Head of Middle Office Services – Fund Services

• Face off with both Fund Services and the broader Investor Services Transformation team to ensure connectivity, driving and owning the budgets for change.

• Champion of communication across the global function ensuring no duplication or overlap looking for synergies with every decision.

• Key partner for our client team and a trusted leader to deliver for the clients

• Help drive Data team culture.

• Work with Risk & Control team to implement data access controls.

• Work with Legal, Risk, & Compliance partners on program policies

• Lead efforts to establish, formalize and communicate business solutions and educate business stakeholders particularly the client teams on value and importance of proposed accounting solutions.

• Work closely with all technical partners to align strategic technical investments to the target state business architecture or justify any deviations.

• Drive client value propositions, positioning, segmentation, pricing, targeting, channel strategies, and competitive differentiation to achieve preferred status as a partner to Citi clients

• Develop plans and execute functional strategies for a country, multiple countries, region, or business requiring coordination and integration across units as well as provide input into strategic decisions affecting job family or function within a region or business

• Manage client and competitor market research, develop product innovation roadmap, and address fundamental trials of product commoditization to create an advanced set of solutions

• Appropriately assess risk when business decisions are made, demonstrating particular consideration for the firm's reputation and safeguarding Citigroup, its clients and assets, by driving compliance with applicable laws, rules and regulations, adhering to Policy, applying sound ethical judgment regarding personal behaviour, conduct and business practices, and escalating, managing and reporting control issues with transparency, as well as effectively supervise the activity of others and create accountability with those who fail to maintain these standards.

• Drive a positive Voice of the Employee (VOE) rating each year – lead by example

Qualifications

• 10-15+ years Middle Office industry experience ideally in a fund services business or as a COO of a recognised asset manager. Ideally have a proven track record in re-engineering efforts across multiple Middle Office platforms (CRD, Aladdin , BBG AIM, SCD)

• Exceptional communication & presentation skills

• Have previous experience working with C-Suite stakeholders.

• Has superior strategic, analytic and problem-solving skills, and is capable of clearly communicating a long term vision across the company and clients

• Natural collaborator. Partner with product management teams and product delivery executives to ensure both product and client roadmaps and implementation strategies are aligned to technology and business investments.

• Extensive experience in business process technology architecture engineering /implementations

• Deep industry experience in tech solutions for Middle Office Services (Traditional and Alts)

• Outcome oriented, with a successful track record of delivering excellence for our clients

• Self-motivated, independent, multi-tasker, willing and able to take ownership of various parts of an initiative.

• Ability to effectively deliver under time pressure, clarifying ambiguity as needed to deliver against expectations.

• Ability to coordinate and tie break in complex and siloed organizations through Influence and develop strong relationships by driving value added change.

• Must be disciplined and comfortable with ambiguity, possessing the maturity and capability to interact and influence across multiple levels and a global matrixed organization

• Ability to elevate the conversation to client’s needs and objectives, and also dig into the details and process flows

• Flexible – demonstrated experience working effectively with multiple stake holders Head of Middle Office Services – Fund Services

• Strong analytical skills, including numbers and situational analyses, and high attention to detail

• Organization and project management skills, including effective cross-functional management skills

• Team player

• Able to prioritize work, and shift priorities as needed to meet aggressive deadlines and milestones

• Promotes teamwork and builds strong relationships within and across global teams

• Bring multiple teams together to drive towards a common goal for the enterprise.

Education

• Bachelor's degree/University degree or equivalent experience

• Qualified Accountant and or a CFA preferred.

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Citi is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified candidates will receive consideration without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other characteristic protected by law.

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