Assistant Manager, Investment Accounting

About FWD Group

FWD Group (1828.HK) is a pan-Asian life and health insurance business that serves more than 38 million customers across 10 markets, including BRI Life in Indonesia. FWD's customer-led and tech-enabled approach aims to deliver innovative propositions, easy-to-understand products and a simpler insurance experience. Established in 2013, the company operates in some of the fastest-growing insurance markets in the world with a vision of changing the way people feel about insurance. FWD Group is listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange under the stock code 1828.

For more information, please visit

FWD Technology and Innovation Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., known as FWD TIM, was established in late 2019. Strategically located in Kuala Lumpur, FWD TIM serves as a pivotal shared service location within FWD Group, providing services to multiple markets across the Group. FWD TIM houses a diverse and talented workforce focused on essential business and technology services such as information security, cloud operations, IT solutions delivery, digital and data, actuarial, finance, investments, and customer service, among many others. FWD TIM is dedicated to drive and deliver operational excellence and efficiency, foster innovation and ensure regulatory compliance across all business functions as well as maintain a competitive edge in the market.

PURPOSE
Hold work supervisory responsibility by overseeing, guiding and coaching the junior members on the Group Investment Accounting activities and key initiatives (i.e., investment accounting daily BAU, month end reporting, ClearWater expertise). The overall objective of this role is to ensure the seamless delivery of activities associated with Group Entities reporting and achieve the necessary compliance, expected efficiency and effectiveness.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES

Investment Accounting

• Oversee, perform and review reconciliations, including position, cash and suspense, on Clearwater for assigned business units and Group Entities, and escalate to direct superior if required.

• Perform and guide the junior members on the month end booking and reporting within stated SLAs and group standards for assigned business units and Group Entities.

• Manage and ensure the consistency and accuracy of the group-wide financial and management reporting of investments.

• Check and ensure the FWD pricing hierarchy is updated, and related controls executed.

• Perform and guide the junior members on the quarterly SPPI and ECL calculations.

• Review and approve all accounting transactions.

• Assist the Senior Manager Investment Accounting affecting group-wide financial and management reporting of investments.

• Identify and implement corrective action plans across teams within Group Investment and business units while analyzing, assessing and proposing improvement on the operation process.

• Escalate complex or major control gaps and issues to senior management as needed

• Guide, coach and train junior members on new procedures, change requests and company communication.

• Act as process and SOPs SME to business units and Group Investments

• Actively identify opportunities and contribute to the design, development and continuous improvement of the Group Investment's group-wide operational guidelines, service technology solutions, baselines and controls.

Clearwater, Oracle and any future Finance Systems Subject Matter Expert

• Continuous improvement and fixing of Clearwater, Oracle and Finance systems issues by optimizing the use of relevant systems and implementing standard procedures across FWD.

• Utilize Clearwater, Oracle and future Finance systems modules to enhance and automate reporting.

• Investigate and advise on new report requirements and standardize the production of the reports from Clearwater, Oracle and future Finance systems.

Data Management

• Integrate data between Bloomberg AIM, Clearwater, Oracle and any other Finance systems to ensure data integrity as well as consistent and accurate reporting.

• Lead and ensure the standardization of the recording of investment transactions into Clearwater by having consistent treatment of security product types.

• Lead and ensure the standardization of pricing of exotic assets and cross held securities within FWD.

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

• Monthly reporting submitted within SLA.

• Assigned business units and Group Office reconciliations have no unknown breaks.

• Pricing accuracy of 99.9%.

• Able to resolve the issues arising from daily operations and/or assist the team to solve the issues arise in an efficient and effective manner.

• Able to assist SM to monitor the daily operations as well as to ensure quality and smooth month-end closing.

• Able to prioritize tasks and demonstrated ability to work with details.

EXTERNAL & INTERNAL CONTACTS

Internal:

• ICOE Investment Operations

• Group Investment Accounting

• Assigned business units Finance

• Group Entity Finance

• Group Investments

• Local finance

External:

• Clearwater

• Custodians

• 3rd Party Asset Managers

• 3rd Party Pricing Providers

DECISION MAKING

Recommend appropriate solutions to resolve investment accounting issues to management.

QUALIFICATIONS / EXPERIENCE

• University degree in Accounting/Business/Finance or related fields.

• 8+ years of experience working in investment accounting or a fund accounting environment

KNOWLEDGE & TECHNICAL SKILLS

Business Knowledge

• Expert in investment or fund accounting including best practice.

• Solid knowledge of investment products (equities, fixed income, collateral).

• Experience working with Private Equity and Alternative Credit products is an asset.

Technical Skills

• Investment Accounting Systems (PAM, FAM, Portia, Clearwater, etc)

• Microsoft Office

• Pricing Providers such Bloomberg, Refinitiv, etc.

Management Skills

• Experience in leading small teams in an Investment Accounting or Fund Accounting environment is preferred.

• Clarity in communication and being an active listener.

• Being empathic with a desire to help others.

COMPETENCIES

• Ability to guide and coach junior members

• Able to work independently or as part of a team.

• Excellent interpersonal skills.

• Good command of both spoken and written English

• Understanding inter-dependencies and inter-connections of systems seeing the big picture rather than the parts.

• Being flexible and adaptable for change.

• Learning from mistakes and desire to improve.