Description

Job Summary:

The Investment Accountant II, Separately Managed Accounts is a hands-on accounting role supporting the firm's Separately Managed Account (SMA) business, which represents over $20 billion in client assets. The role owns the accuracy and integrity of accounting data within Clearwater, the firm's SaaS-based investment accounting system, and works across trade settlement, cash and income processing, pricing, performance, month-end close, and account onboarding and offboarding.

As a Middle Office function, the accountant serves as the primary accounting control point for SMA portfolio data, working closely with the Settlements team, Portfolio Managers, Sales, the Director of Risk and Middle Office, and the CIO to ensure that Clearwater and Bloomberg data remain reconciled and that SMA accounts are accurately reported and ready to support Portfolio Manager decision-making.

Duties/Responsibilities:

Data Reconciliation & System Mapping

Own the Tri-Party Reconciliation process across custody position records, Bloomberg IBOR position records, and Clearwater accounting records; work with Clearwater, custodians, and Bloomberg to research and correct any position breaks.
Perform reconciliations of data between Bloomberg and Clearwater.
Reconcile mapping tables in Clearwater to ensure reporting files are properly coded for consumption between systems.
Assist with reconciling which Clearwater accounts belong in each cash batch based on account and custodian complexity.
Ensure that trades in Clearwater match trade amounts in Bloomberg, and work with the Middle Office and Settlements team to resolve any discrepancies.
Assist with reconciliation of alternative investments and client positions held outside of Clearwater.

Clearwater Accounting & Journal Entries

Review, research, and instruct Clearwater on corrections to any unposted or incorrect journal entries.
Review all cash entries to confirm they relate only to client contributions and withdrawals, and properly code all other cash activity.
Work to ensure that unposted income, dividends, interest, and principal paydowns are collected and posted.

Trade Settlement & Cash Management

Identify, research, escalate, and coordinate resolution of fixed income or equity transactions not completed by the custodian or broker, in partnership with Middle Office, Settlements, custodians, and brokers.
Calculate and research accounts for any overdraft amounts, and provide written and timely notification to Portfolio Managers or the Middle Office Settlements team to address the overdraft.

Performance & Pricing

Support the quarterly Pricing Committee process by preparing pricing exception reports, documenting outcomes, and validating that approved pricing hierarchies are applied correctly across accounts in Clearwater.
Review that performance is accurate for security-level positions across accounts, and compare Clearwater performance to attribution performance in Bloomberg PORT Enterprise.
Assist Fund Accounting, Portfolio Management, and the Middle Office with preparing quarterly pricing evaluation reports, and identify any prices or price changes outside of tolerance.

Month-End Close

Perform month-end accounting checks and prepare data for the Client Services team.
Ensure that BVAL and vendor price data and waterfalls in Clearwater are respected daily, and confirm pricing data accuracy for month end.
Reconcile Bloomberg trading activity with Clearwater trading activity to confirm all trades are captured and recorded consistently across systems.
Perform Tri-Party Reconciliation across custody position records, Bloomberg IBOR position records, and Clearwater accounting records as part of month-end close, and confirm that any position breaks are resolved.
Review unposted entries and confirm that collection or payment was completed, or work with the Middle Office Settlements team or custodians to correct anything out of line.
Reconcile aggregates among Bloomberg, Clearwater, Composite IQ, and Salesforce.
Review that entries are documented correctly with trade, settle, and post dates.
Ensure that analytic data, including yield and duration, is accurate at month end.
Ensure that cash activity relates to client contributions and withdrawals, or is coded to the correct transaction type, as part of month-end review.
Assist with the final pricing data upload into Bloomberg to run attribution reporting.

Account Onboarding & Offboarding

Assist the Onboarding team with ensuring cost basis data uploads are accurate, and that yield, original face, and inception date reporting are accurate prior to launch.
Assist Sales and Middle Office Onboarding and Offboarding team members to quickly onboard new accounts as business is won.
Support offboarding activity, which typically occurs mid-month after client statements have been issued, including unwinding portfolios and related reconciliations.
Assist Onboarding and Offboarding team members with ensuring Clearwater connects properly to custody and Bloomberg feeds for tri-party reconciliation.
Assist Onboarding and Offboarding team members with ensuring cash feed and mapping tables work accurately so that Bloomberg cash data supports Portfolio Manager trading, and note any unsettled trades that could affect those numbers in Clearwater and Bloomberg.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Reporting

Maintain account-level custom fields and reporting attributes in Clearwater to support Sales and downstream reporting needs.
Support the Director of Risk and Middle Office and the CIO with accounting reporting, including aggregating reports by Portfolio Manager and building accounting reports in Clearwater to support day-to-day Portfolio Manager decisions.

Rating Agency Reporting (S&P / Fitch)

Identify and maintain the proper data tables required to support S&P and Fitch rating agency reporting.
Work with Information Technology/Dev to automate rating agency reporting on the required weekly and monthly intervals.

Requirements

Required Skills/Abilities:

Hands-on experience with Clearwater or a comparable investment accounting or fund accounting platform strongly preferred.
Ability to learn Bloomberg navigation commands to review and research position and trade data and support batch upload processes; hands-on experience with Bloomberg PORT Enterprise or AIM is a plus.
Solid understanding of fixed income and equity trade settlement, custody operations, and corporate actions processing.
Strong attention to detail and accuracy across journal entries, reconciliations, and reporting.
Ability to research and resolve data discrepancies independently, and to escalate matters requiring senior review in a timely, well-documented manner.
Effective written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to provide clear, timely notification to Portfolio Managers and Middle Office team members.
Demonstrates effective collaboration across a multi-disciplinary team environment, including Middle Office, Settlements, Sales, Portfolio Management, and Onboarding and Offboarding. 
Ability to manage multiple priorities and adapt quickly to shifting business needs, particularly during account onboarding, offboarding, and month-end close.
Strong analytical mindset with the ability to think both conceptually and at the transaction level.
Advanced Microsoft Excel skills, including pivot tables, lookups, formulas, data validation, and reconciliation workflows across large data sets; experience with Python or other tools for large-scale data analysis is a plus.

Education and Experience: 

Bachelor's degree required, preferably in Accounting, Finance, or a related field.
2 to 5 years of experience in investment accounting, fund accounting, or middle office operations, ideally supporting Separately Managed Accounts.
Working knowledge of the security types held across SMA portfolios, including fixed income instruments such as Treasuries, agency bullets, agency mortgages, CMBS, CMOs, corporate bonds, municipal bonds, and preferreds. and money market funds; and equity instruments such as U.S. domestic equities, REITs, and U.S. domestic ETFs.
Proficient in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
Active pursuit of the CPA designation, or CPA already obtained, is a plus but not required.