Apex Group Careers

Specialist: Investment Compliance Support Services – Cape Town

Summary of the position

The ICSS (Investment Compliance Support Services) team reports both regulatory and bespoke mandate compliance breaches to clients daily on a post-trade basis, and provides the functionality to our clients for monitoring breaches on a pre-trade basis as well.  The team also produce certain  regulatory holdings reports to clients, run from the data warehouse and enriched with data from both InvestOne and NXManager.

The role requires broad knowledge across the investment and operational cycle. It largely entails the interpretation of both mandates and legislation/regulation in order to effectively translate the regulation into workable compliance rule results, upon which our clients depend for guiding their investment decisions within client mandates and prescribed regulation. The role will collaborate within the ICSS team and other relevant teams to ensure that the interpretation is successfully applied to both the NX Manager platform (enabling pre- and post-trade compliance) as well as the Compliance Reporting Warehouse. Whilst the primary focus of the role is thus the interpretation of mandates / regulation / legislation, there is also a requirement to have a working knowledge and understanding of the investment operations cycle to inform the process of converting the regulatory and mandate interpretation into codeable rules within the technology platform, and to be able to address queries from our clients in respect of rule behaviour.  Therefore strong technical or operational knowledge of investment instruments is required, as well as experience on NX Manager (Decalog) (preferred) or another comparable compliance monitoring system is ideal.

Outline of main duties and responsibilities

The main responsibilities of the role will be:

• Assist with daily post-trade reporting and monthly compliance reporting (Reg28 and Reg30) and troubleshooting classification issues.
• Attend to your allocated client queries during the day within SLA timeframes, and to generally support all client queries as and when required.
• Perform monthly preparation checks to ensure sound and consistent instrument and issuer classifications for monthly reporting.
• Continually cleaning static data to support daily monitoring and monthly report integrity.
• Support the efforts within the ICSS team in respect of interpreting and documenting legislative, regulatory and mandate compliance requirements.
• Documenting the interpretation of legislative or regulatory changes, in a manner which allows for these documents to be circulated internally at Apex or externally to clients.
• Assisting the ICSS team in translating and applying the interpretations to NX Manager and the Compliance Reporting Warehouse.
• Monitoring of regulatory changes pending and appropriate planning for these changes, including client communications.
• Developing, coding, and implementing compliance rules to NX Manager.
• Continually reviewing compliance rules to improve integrity.
• Following of proper test protocol in UAT environment and change control protocol of rules into the production environment.
• Being pro-active in solution-finding and regularly question processes and “status quo’s” to constantly improve;
• Providing support to the Apex client base in respect of compliance related queries, including interpretation, breaches, reporting, etc.
• Build excellent rapport with clients in developing their confidence in our service offering, by understanding their requirements   fully, and maintaining such well managed relationships to achieve the best results for the clients.
• Supporting the business development effort in expanding the Compliance Support Services function.
• Actively strive to live by and operate within the Apex core values.
• Actively drive and contribute to a culture of quality/excellence, through risk awareness and adherence to compliance standards and all relevant operational controls and processes.

Skills and experience required

The successful candidate will:

• An accounting or business degree (minimum B.Com or equivalent) together with at least 4-5 years fund administration/management experience in a compliance related role;
• Certificate in Compliance Management;
• Strong numerical and analytical skills to review fund compliance reports in detail and respond to queries. The role requires excellent Excel skill to analyse portfolio exposures and structures and to determine and test required compliance rule output;
• Strong knowledge of the full investment process starting from the portfolio manager’s investment decision through operational process to client reporting;
• Strong knowledge and understanding of the regulatory investment limits dominant in the Republic of South Africa such as Regulation 28, CISCA, Regulation 30, and short-and long-term insurance investment limits and how various instruments apply to these regulations;
• Attention to detail and structured work approach;
• Excellent communication and negotiation skills, both written and verbal, as the ICSS team is dependent on downstream operations.  The rule requires confident interaction with all areas of the business in order to perform team tasks;
• Confident, self-motivated individual and able to work under pressure;
• Positive attitude and dedication.

Reporting structure

The Specialist: Investment Compliance Support Services  will report to the Manager: Investment Compliance Support Services,  based in the Cape Town office.

Remuneration level

Remuneration will be market related and commensurate with experience and seniority.  In addition, the successful candidate will receive a competitive benefits package and be eligible to participate in the firm-wide discretionary bonus scheme.

 

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