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Salary Job Description
Job Title: Risk and Controls Consultant
Contract Type: FTC - 12 Month
Location: Edinburgh
At abrdn, our purpose is to enable our clients to be better investors.
Clients worldwide trust us to find future-fit investment opportunities to deliver the outcomes they want. Our technology and insight help empower them to make better decisions, while the powerful partnerships we build help to enhance the expertise that we offer. And by enabling clients to invest responsibly, it helps us to build a better world.
About the team
Operating within the abrdn Investments Vector COO – Investment Vector Governance function, the ‘Risk and Controls’ team support all areas of the Investment Vector in the management and control of their risks and issues. This is key to the development of the new Investment Vector Governance, Risk Management and Controls framework recently endorsed by the Investment Vector Executive, and sponsored by IV CEO.
The team produces regular reporting to internal and external customers with trend analysis of issues and errors and commentary on the control environment.
The team also perform controls reviews where internal operational issues or areas of risk are identified, or where there is a significant control breakdown at a supplier. This may result in the delivery of due diligence visits to key Third Party Suppliers and attendance or contribution at key supplier meetings such as Control Committees or Joint Risk and Compliance Committees.
About the role
The purpose of this role is to support all areas of the Investment Vector in the management and control of their risks and issues, both internally to the organisation and across the third-party administrators. This is a first line Risk and Control role within the Governance Risk and Controls area.
The team manages responding to internal risk events or TPA Operational Events. These could manifest in pricing errors, breaches or other issues, so a key part of the role is supporting teams across the Investments vector to correct incidents, ensure appropriate compensation and remediation of clients and funds, support reporting and raising of events and focus on effective preventative actions and improvements to strengthen controls and process across the vector and help to prevent re-occurrence.
The role will interface internally with multiple areas across the Investment Vector, including Manufacturing, Commercialisation and Enablement teams within the vector and key contacts in Corporate Functions such as Risk and Compliance.
Externally the role will collaborate with critical Third Party Administrators for the Investment Vector (principally Citigroup, BNPP, BoNY and State Street) as well as other external providers such as Trustees, Depositaries and external auditors.
The role combines a blend of regular tasks, project work, new business enablement and participation in industry initiatives.
Key Outcomes
- As a team, support the roll out and embedding of the new Investment Vector Governance Risk and Control strategy across the Investments Vector
- As a team, fully understand the key accountabilities, processes and Controls that are critical to delivery of customer or regulatory outcomes across the Vector and provide support and partnership to internal leadership teams and external customers in ensuring risks are effectively managed and controlled
- Help to identify control and process weaknesses across the Investments Vector and work with the stakeholders to improve controls efficiently and effectively;
- Keep up to date with material changes to operating models that support key client and regulatory outcomes
- Understand and support strong governance for Legal Entities across the Investment Vector helping to ensure timely and accurate reporting and raising of issues and management of key risks
- Globally, ensure that risk events or external operational events or pricing errors follow the appropriate notification, investigation and resolution process, with a focus on understanding the root cause of issues and implementing preventative actions where necessary;
- Support or periodically lead operational improvement workshops and control reviews covering end-to-end processes and Controls across the Investments Vector and third-party suppliers to identify control weaknesses and implement improvements, this may involve due diligence reviews of key third parties and production of concise and useful reporting;
- Build and sustain productive working relationships with key internal and external customers to support embedded good governance, sound risk management practices and improvements to the Investment Vector control environment.
- As a team, contribute to the effective running and management of key Governance Risk and Control Forums, such as Operational Risk and Controls Forum, Investment Vector Risk and Controls Forum or Joint Risk and Compliance Committees with key third party administrators.
- To assist in the planning and Trustee and Depositary due diligence visits, undertaken to review abrdn processes and to ensure that procedures, checks and/or controls are in place at Legal entity).
- As a team, to ensure that abrdn Investment Vector works in full co-operation with External Audit, Internal Audit, Risk and Compliance. Work collaboratively with internal collaborators across the vector to promote responsibility for agreeing management action plans with those functions concerned and establish tracking mechanisms to ensure completion of management action plans are accurate and on time.
- Keep informed of relevant material changes in respect of the Investment vector’s operating models, services and key third party providers to ensure strong awareness and support can be provided to stakeholders, particularly as any change takes place.
About the candidate
To be successful in this role you will need (minimum experience/ requirements)
- Extensive practical experience in a risk or controls role, with relevant qualifications or training being an advantage
- Some knowledge of asset management processes across manufacturing, commercialisation and enablement functions an advantage
- Strong analytical skills and attention to detail
- Strong interpersonal skills including the ability to build and maintain strong working relationships
- In depth knowledge of MS Office suite of applications, particularly Excel and reporting tools like Power BI.
- Strong communication skills, both oral and written
- Knowledge of managing outsourced relationships helpful but not mandatory
Moreover, we recognise that supplementary skills beyond the minimum criteria can greatly enhance your success in this position. These skills are:
A team player – able to collaborate effectively with your colleagues, consistently putting the teams’ goals and interests ahead of personal ones and actively contributing to the wider teams shared objectives.- Strong Organisational Skills and an acute attention to detail.
- Excellent time management skills – the ability to demonstrate exceptional time management skills by efficiently planning and prioritising tasks to meet deadlines.
- Self-Motivation – you exhibit a high level of self-motivation and can take the initiative to identify and tackle challenges proactively.
- You are able to take ownership of your work, ensuring that it aligns with organisational objectives and quality standards.
Our Benefits
There's more to working life than coming home with a good salary. We have an environment where you can learn, get involved and be supported.
When you join us, your reward will be one of the best around, including 40 days annual leave, a 16% employer pension contribution, a discretionary performance-based bonus (where applicable), private healthcare and a range of flexible benefits including gym discounts, season ticket loans and access to an employee discount site amongst many others. You can read more about our benefits
here.
We’re committed to providing an inclusive workplace where all forms of difference are valued and which is free from any form of unfair or unlawful treatment. We define diversity in its broadest sense – this includes but is not limited to our diversity of educational and professional backgrounds, experience, cognitive and neurodiversity, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, religion or belief and ethnicity and geographical provenance. We support a culture that values meritocracy, fairness and transparency and welcomes enquiries from everyone.
If you need assistance or an adjustment due to a disability please let us know as part of your application and we will assist.
