Principal Investment Consultant

About Sanlam Corporate:

Our vision is to be the preferred partner to Corporate and Public Sector by providing an awesome client experience and comprehensive solutions that enable the financial resilience and prosperity of those entities and their employees. We believe in creating and cultivating a positive, energised working environment that gives every individual the opportunity to achieve success, embracing diversity and committed to transformation. We do this through living our values of having the courage to be bold, care, collaboration and an intolerance for mediocrity. We’re all about building strong, lasting relationships with our employees. We know that you have hopes for your future – your career, your personal development and of achieving great things. We pride ourselves in helping our employees to realise their worth.

About Simeka:

Simeka is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sanlam Corporate. Simeka is a consulting and advisory business that operates primarily in the employee benefits industry. We offer innovative solutions and services to a wide range of clients encompassing both defined benefit and defined contribution retirement funds, employers, medical schemes, trade unions and members of retirement funds. Our key differentiators are as follows:
Our approach to investment consulting is to understand our clients’ needs and to tailor appropriate investment strategies aimed at providing value-for-money investment outcomes designed to improve financial security for members and pensioners.

Overall purpose of the role:

An investment consultant role within an experienced and dynamic investment consulting team. Apply your knowledge of best practices to provide investment consulting services to institutional clients. This includes, but is not limited to, market and economic updates, strategic asset allocation implementation, portfolio construction and investment strategy formulation.

The ideal candidate must be able to operate independently and provide investment advice to a diverse client base with varying needs.

Key Responsibilities:

Independently provide strategic investment advice and oversee the implementation of this advice to a wide range of institutional clients including retirement funds, medical schemes, corporates, trusts and mining rehabilitation funds.Strong technical investment and client servicing excellence in servicing institutional clients,.Keep abreast with the regulatory & economic environment as it impacts client portfolios.Keen understanding of the asset manager landscape, ideally including alternative asset classes and global investment strategies.

Comfortable presenting complex investment concepts in an understandable manner to institutional clients who have a wide level of understanding.

Ability to tailor investment advice and service delivery to varying levels of client sophistication and objectives.

Key Responsibilities:

Actively participate in team discussions and contribute to team learnings and investment decision-making.Run quantitative and qualitative analyses on client portfolios and assess areas for improvement. Have experience in blending both quantitative and qualitative analysis to provide appropriate investment advice to clients.Assess the impact and implementation of market or regulatory changes on client portfolios.
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Embodying principles of Treating Customers Fairly.
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Facilitating and coordinating work between internal departments.Self-development.

Ensure that standard procedures and best practices are maintained and adhered to.

Risk awareness and the management of these risks.

Qualification and Experience:

Relevant bachelor's degree – bachelor’s degree majoring in Finance, Economics or Actuarial Science (Hons).CAIA, CFA, MCom advantageousFAIS Accreditation / RE 5 (NOT working under supervision)

Multi-lingual advantageous

Minimum of 5 to 10 years investment consulting / multi-manager research experience.Experience in managing complex board relationships. Preferably this experience includes actual delivery of consulting services to boards.

Must have experience in dealing with pension funds or other institutional clients on investment matters – either providing investment feedback and discussing performance attribution (e.g. Senior Client Investment Specialist or Portfolio Manager) or consulting to pension funds and/or other institutional clients on investment matters.

Be able to manage a large portfolio of clients unsupervised – will have support of associate investment consultants or investment consultants, be able to manage delivery from them.

Solid understanding of investment markets, with own experience in dealing with local asset managers and ability to understand strengths and weaknesses of asset managers and how the managers are blended into a solution for clients.

Knowledge and Skills

Deep understanding of investment marketsAnalytical skills – analyse complex data and simplify complexity into solution driven advice for clients.Ability to deal with ambiguity – e.g. how do you manage “best advice” framework so that this translates to appropriate support for Sanlam products and services.

Research skills and knowledge of asset managers, portfolio construction techniques etc.

Deadline driven – focus on implementation.

Knowledge and Skills (Continuous):

Strong attention to detail.Knowledge of investment products/asset classes and wider Investment services industry and process.Computer literate with proficiency in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint)Systems knowledge and experience advantageous (Morningstar, Iress)Self-starter

Communication skills – ability to explain complex investment matters in an understandable way tailored to the level of each client.

Solid understanding of portfolio construction.

Core Competencies

Cultivates Innovation by creating new and better ways for the organisation to be successful.Client Focus - Building strong customer relationships and delivering customer-centric solutions.Drives Results - Consistently achieving results, even under tough circumstances.

Collaborates - Building partnerships and working collaboratively with others to meet shared objectives.

Resilience - Rebounding from setbacks and adversity when facing difficult situations.

Personal Qualities:

Organisational Savvy – Maneuvering comfortably through complex policy, process and people related organizational dynamics.Manages Complexity – Making sense of complex, high quantity and sometimes contradictory information to effectively solve problems.Drives Engagement – Creating a climate where people are motivated to do their best to help the organisation achieve its objectives.

Business Insight – Applying knowledge of the business and marketplace to advance the organisation’s goals.

Displays Care – Showing care and consideration to our clients that extends beyond professionalism

Turnaround time

The shortlisting process will only start once the application due date has been reached. The time taken to complete this process will depend on how far you progress and the availability of managers. 

Our commitment to transformation

The Sanlam Group is committed to transformation and embracing diversity and our employment equity plan and targets will be considered as part of the recruitment process. This commitment is what drives us to achieve a diverse workplace with employment equity as a key goal to create an inclusive workforce, representative of the demographics of our society as well as people with disabilities.