Director, Investment Risk (PL)

Your opportunity

We believe in the importance of in-office collaboration and fully intend for the selected candidate for this role to work on site in the specified location(s).

At Schwab, you’re empowered to make an impact on your career. Here, innovative thought meets creative problem solving, helping us “challenge the status quo” and transform the finance industry together.

Schwab Asset Management (SAM) is the asset management arm of the Charles Schwab Corporation and has over $1.4 Trillion assets under management in mutual funds, ETFs and separately managed account strategies. Products managed include a wide variety of active and indexed equity, fixed income, asset allocation strategies, and money markets funds. SAM uses a consistent and disciplined approach to investing across all our products and seeks to develop innovative new products to meet the core investing needs of our clients.  The SAM Investment Risk Team quantifies and reports on the investment risk of more than 480 different investment portfolios and strategies.

The Director will be the investment risk team leader for multi-asset and third-party (external manager) investment products, a key member of the dedicated Investment Risk management team and will work closely with the Head of Investment Risk, with portfolio managers, and with other analysts in monitoring overall risk exposures of investment products.  This work requires in-depth knowledge of theoretical and practical asset management, risk modeling, and portfolio construction. The person will play a significant role in the risk management of passive and active investment strategies for a wide spectrum of equity, fixed income, and multi-asset investment products. This role requires a talented and successful professional with strong quantitative and communication skills to partner closely with multiple portfolio management teams at SAM while liaising regularly with other Schwab business lines.  This is both a people leader and quantitative analysis role.

What you’ll do:

• Continually engage SAM multi-asset portfolio management as a leading multi-asset risk model guru who runs quarterly investment risk & performance meetings in parallel for 5 separate multi-asset teams.
• Lead two highly engaged direct reports to expand investment risk reporting coverage, enhance reporting, and drive continued partnership momentum with the SAM multi-asset and the SAM Investment Manager Research sub-advised teams.
• Act as an outsourced quant expert resource to the SAM Investment Manager Research (IMR) Team and play a key role in SAM’s external manager searches and monitoring of existing investments.
• Represent the SAM Investment Risk Team and act as a voting member on multiple SAM governance committees.
• Be responsible for identifying, critically analyzing, and communicating market and non-market risks to investment professionals and to senior management.
• Conduct detailed independent assessments of investment strategies.
• Contribute to the operational running, maintenance and upgrade of department risk analytics and reporting.
• Take an active role in the portfolio risk budgeting process and recommend changes to positioning or processes when necessary.
• Perform ad-hoc analyses and reporting to address evolving market conditions and portfolio developments.
• Contribute to SAMS’ multi-faceted Investment Risk Management Team by applying your own unique education and problem-solving experience.
• Monitor domestic and foreign regulatory policies on financial markets while identifying issues affecting Schwab’s investment management business.
• Provide strategic analysis to inter-disciplinary committees.
• Communicate messages clearly, authentically, and persuasively in a way that motivates people to take action.
• Leverage the opinions, perspectives, and ideas of colleagues and incorporates their input into plans and priorities.
• Identify and remove obstacles that prevent teams from doing their best work.
• Coach team members on how to strike the right balance between analysis, judgment, agility, and urgency in order to deliver positive results.

What you have

Required:

• 10+ years of quantitative investment management experience on the buy side
• 10+ years’ experience using risk models (Barra/Axioma/Aladdin/ MSCI MAC), Portfolio Optimizers (Axioma/Aladdin/BarraOne), and general market analytical tools (FactSet/ Bloomberg/ Aladdin/ BarraOne).
• Experience with coding with tools such as R, SQL, Excel VBA and Python and the ability to work programmatically with databases.
• Experience with market risks monitoring including the use of investment risk metrics, performance and risk attribution, scenario analysis, and stress testing.
• A technically savvy background and experience with the ability to integrate internally developed analytics with third-party vendor solutions such as Aladdin and Morningstar.
• Experience in applying machine learning to analyze datasets, drive investment risk decisions, and automate business processes.
• Familiarity with current industry practices and relevant academic research about risk management and portfolio construction.
• Ability to utilize a versatile skill set and leadership qualities to take detail-oriented approaches to creatively solve problems.
• Capacity to coach and encourage other team members on how to identify the right balance between analysis, judgment, agility and urgency in order to deliver positive results.
• Sufficient depth of experience to interact effectively with portfolio managers via meetings, presentations, and written reports.
• Superior communication skills: Ability to explain quantitative concepts to a nontechnical audience, and communicate different messages clearly, authentically, and persuasively in a way that motivates people to act.
• Ability to work effectively in a collaborative environment and being able to leverage the opinions, perspectives, and ideas of colleagues and incorporates their input into plans and priorities.

Preferred:

• An advanced degree in quantitative discipline is a definite plus. CFA, FRM, CAIA, PRIMA, or GARP designations are a plus.
• Experience in multi-asset and external manager management is a distinct plus.