Senior Manager, Investment Business Solutions

Senior Manager, Investment Business Solutions

Department: Investment Operations - Finance and Facilities

Type: Permanent

Location: Toronto (Hybrid)

Posting Date: February 19th, 2025

At OPTrust, paying pensions today, preserving pensions for tomorrow is our mission and business.

When you choose OPTrust, you join a team of smart, talented people who fuel our success and have a passion for pensions. Everyone at OPTrust – in Toronto, London and Sydney – makes a meaningful impact. Our culture is driven by team members with different backgrounds and perspectives creating an inclusive and fulfilling place to work for everyone. We work in a fast-paced environment, but we find time to have fun and give back to the community.

What OPTrust offers you

• Unique culture rooted in our core values – collaboration and teamwork, integrity, respect, flexibility, excellence and continuous improvement.

• A purpose-driven environment where we all work towards the common goal of paying pensions today and preserving pensions for tomorrow.

• Comprehensive benefits focused on your health and wellness, including dental, vision and extended health benefits, as well as membership in our world-class defined benefit pension plan.

• A flexible, hybrid work model.

• A dedicated inclusion, diversity and equity strategy with meaningful opportunities to participate, including our employee-led resource groups.

• Extensive professional development opportunities and learning initiatives including access to LinkedIn Learning, guest speakers, tuition reimbursement, professional association memberships, leadership development programs, a mentorship program, monthly professional development time and more.

• A competitive vacation package with additional work-life balance day.

About the role

The Finance and Facilities Division is led by the Chief Financial Officer and includes accounting, operational, tax, and facilities functions and roles supporting OPTrust investment and pension activities.

The Senior Manager, Investment Business Solutions, will lead the development and implementation of investment data governance frameworks and enhance the integration of OPTrust’s investment systems. This role requires extensive knowledge of investment data, systems, and products, as well as strong leadership and strategic decision-making skills to support various teams including Finance, Investments, Investment Risk and Compliance. The Senior Manager, Investment Business Solutions is also responsible for positively supporting the team’s level of service, ability to meet timelines and deliver a consistently high level of quality within the Investment Business Solutions Team.

What you’ll do

Leadership and Planning:

• Leads and manages the Investment Business Solutions team within Finance including staff development, coaching and performance management.

• Manages resources, optimizes team structure and leads the execution of strategic initiatives to deliver business and financial goals efficiently and effectively. 

• Ensures transparent communication through departmental and one-on-one meetings.

• Delivers process training to the team.

• Partner with the People team to recruit and develop a diverse pool of talent.

• Cultivates team morale and unity by consciously creating a workplace culture consistent with our values.

• Recognizes and celebrates individual contributors and team accomplishments.

• Manages Team Budgets - Establishes and manages annual team costs within approved amounts and limits.

Investment operations systems and optimization:

• Leads and accountable for the planning and implementation of the current and future investment data ecosystem improvements as required by the Finance, Investment, Investment Risk and Compliance teams to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the investment data ecosystem while reducing operational risk, duplicate storage and manual workarounds. 

• Makes recommendations to senior leaders on strategy and initiatives to optimize the user experience and drive internal and external engagement.

Daily Operations and issue management:

• Establishes and maintains processes to ensure timely, efficient and effective secure end-to-end automated daily investment data ecosystem. This system supports Finance, Investment, Investment Risk and Compliance teams with a focus on data integrity and reporting accuracy. 

• Designs workplans with appropriate cross training to ensure the stability of daily operations.

• Accountable for ensuring strategic and operational risks and issues are identified, prioritized, assessed, and mitigated. Ensures that operational risks, errors and unplanned interruptions are minimized and mitigated.

• Defines business requirements for analytics and reporting to ensure data insights inform business decision making.

• Establishes and enforces protocols for issue escalation, resolution, and documentation.

• Address complex or high-impact issues that are escalated by the Investment Business Solution Team Leads.

• Establishes and maintains Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s) for critical processes including data controls and exception handling processes and update on a timely and complete basis.

Stakeholder management:

• Provides strategic guidance to direct reports on stakeholder management practices, ensuring that issues are addressed proactively, and that communication is clear and effective.

• Leads and Influences discussions to align expectations with organizational goals, fostering consensus and driving strategic initiatives.

• Oversee and coordinate the team’s efforts to provide support to Finance, Investments, Investment Risk and Compliance teams for operational needs and to ensure that strategies/plans align with organizational goals.

Vendor Management:

• Develops strong working partnerships with key vendors including Adastra, Eagle, and Meradia.

• Establishes SLA’s and playbooks as appropriate.

• Ensures vendors comply with our policies, compliance requirements and standards.

• Assesses vendors performance relative to expectations and SLA’s on an ongoing basis and provide regular feedback to the vendors.

• Ensures that vendor costs are consistent with agreements.

What you bring

• 10 to 12 years of relevant experience in the financial services industry (preferably in investment operations, asset management, capital markets).

• Minimum 5 years of people management experience.

• Bachelors or Masters (preferred) Degree in mathematics, statistics, finance, accounting, economics, commerce, business, or other equivalent financial/quantitative discipline. 

• Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), Certificate in Investment Performance Measurement (CIPM) or comparable financial designation is desirable. 

• Operational knowledge of investment products, including most or all the following products: Global Public Equities, Bonds, Futures, Private Equity, Real Estate, Infrastructure, Derivatives including Swaps, Forwards, and Options.

• Effective written and verbal communication skills required to communicate complex information in a clear and concise manner.

• Extensive experience in business analysis, process improvement and change management.

• An understanding of complex data sets and the technology and processes needed to develop actionable management insights and reporting for management, and investment teams. 

• Good knowledge of regulatory reporting requirements. 

• Knowledge of Eagle, Bloomberg, MSCI RM, Finbourne, and Oracle is an asset.

• Project Management experience.

• Experience with tools like SSIS, Power BI, Python, SQL is an asset.

• Experience with Business System Requirements, SCRUM, and Six Sigma is an asset.

• Exemplify OPTrust’s values: collaboration and teamwork, integrity, respect, flexibility, excellence, and continuous improvement.

Please submit your application via Workday by March 5th, 2025.

Serving a membership as diverse as ours and investing in a global market means cultivating an environment that embraces inclusion, diversity, and equity in everything we do. OPTrust is an organization engaged in building on our unique and diverse strengths. We know a diversity of backgrounds, cultures, gender identities and perspectives are critical to achieving our shared goals.

If you require accommodation at any time during the recruitment process, please send a message to [email protected], or discuss your needs with the Talent Acquisition Consultant during the telephone screening. We will do our best to work with you and provide appropriate accommodation.

As an organization we’re seeking ways to respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Call to Action 92. We are working with the Canadian Council for Indigenous Business to build bridges with Indigenous communities and partners, and we have created an employee-led Reconciliation Working Group that will work with Indigenous experts to identify a path to reconciliation for our organization.

We thank all interested applicants, however only those under consideration will be contacted.