Manager, Private Markets Risk

at  OPTrust

Manager, Private Markets Risk
Department: Investment Risk
Type: Permanent
Location: Toronto
Posting Date: August 22, 2024
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 – from London, Toronto, and Sydney – makes a meaningful impact, our environment is fast paced, but we find time to have fun and give back to the community as well. Our strength resides in our team members with different backgrounds and perspectives creating an inclusive and fulfilling place to work for everyone.

What OPTrust Offers You

• Unique culture rooted in our core values – collaboration and teamwork, integrity, respect, flexibility, and excellence and continuous improvement – reflected across the team.
• Dedicated business strategy for inclusion, diversity and equity with multiple, meaningful opportunities to participate.
• Flexible, hybrid work model being implemented to balance the benefits of working from home and the collaborative teamwork experience in the office.
• Membership in our world-class defined benefit pension plan.
• A purpose-driven environment, including the opportunity to contribute to OPTrust’s climate change and responsible investing programs.
• Professional development opportunities and learning initiatives including access to LinkedIn Learning, in-house speaker series, tuition reimbursement program and professional association memberships.
• Comprehensive benefits package focused on your health and wellness, including dental, vision and extended health benefits.
• Opportunity to take parental and adoptions leaves to spend time with family.
• Competitive vacation package and time away from work such as work-life balance days.

If you strive for excellence and continuous improvement, value a collaborative and flexible team culture, and approach everything with integrity and respect, then we invite you to apply to join our team!
About the Role
Reporting to the Senior Director, Investment Risk, the Manager will play an integral part in expanding the risk management capabilities of OPTrust, in the area of private equity, infrastructure and real estate investments.
The Manager, Private Markets Risk will be responsible for the development, implementation and maintenance of Total Fund risk measurement methodologies for investments made by the Private Markets Group (PMG, including Infrastructure and Private Equity) and the Real Estate Group (REG).
The individual will be involved in a fundamental understanding of the businesses our deal teams invest in, preparing presentations, and will lead in-depth quantitative and qualitative risk analysis of illiquid investments including developing risk proxies and estimating risk factor sensitivities. Close collaboration with the Investment Division will be required to ensure risk proxies are implemented to estimate Total Fund risk.
What You’ll Do

Risk Analysis & Methodology

• Develop forward looking methodologies to capture the risks in private equity, infrastructure, and real estate investments. This includes risks including market, credit, and liquidity risks.
• Actively participate in Investment Committee meetings, discussing transactions with consideration of how the transaction fits into the total portfolio.
• Stay informed of best practices in illiquid asset risk management by networking with peers, consultants, academics, and other subject matter experts.
• Use qualitative and quantitative and qualitative methods to estimate the investment risks of illiquid investments. Collaborate with the Portfolio Construction Group to identify and use risk factors for illiquid assets.
• Develop risk proxy methodologies for illiquid investments using risk factor sensitivities.
• For large illiquid investments, develop customized risk factor proxies that are consistent with financial statements, valuation memos, and other investment memos.
• Help in our Private Markets Cash Flow Risk Modeling project.
• Actively monitor market conditions and the risk profile of the illiquid portfolios and identify emerging risks.
• Work with the Portfolio Construction Group, and the investment division to develop stress test scenarios for the Total Fund, with a focus on illiquid investments.
• Develop, implement, and provide oversight in producing risk reports specific to the PMG and REG portfolios.
• Produce reports for the Investment Committees and the Board of Trustees and address ad hoc requests by senior management.
• Ensure that position information for private markets assets in internal systems is adequately captured for risk system modeling and provide suggestions for improvement in data quality as needed
• Support the evaluation of risk mitigation strategies at the total fund level.
• Provide input to the benchmarks for illiquid assets. Contribute to setting the risk and return characteristics of illiquid assets used in the asset liability study.
• Define the requirements of any new application or system used to monitor the risk profile of illiquid investments. Participate in the selection and implementation of any new systems required to generate risk monitoring reports.

Mentoring and Staff Management

• Provide staffing recommendations.
• Provide guidance and mentoring to staff, identification of relevant on-going training, development assessments and recommendations.
• Participate in the recruiting process, including development of job specifications, interviews, and assessment of candidates.
• Ongoing planning of work assignments for the team and determination of overtime assignments.
• Coordinate staff training to ensure sufficient backup on all tasks.

What You Bring

• Graduate degree with concentrations in business, economics, finance, or similar field
• 5 or more years of industry experience, including some relevant risk management experience and/or investment/buy side transaction experience, is required.
• Completion of, or enrollment in, the CFA, FRM, CBV or other comparable designation is preferable, but not required.
• Experience with financial modeling and valuation of private equity, infrastructure, or real estate assets is required. Deal experience is a strong asset.
• Experience using quantitative and qualitative methods to model illiquid assets is highly desirable.
• Effective interpersonal and communication skills are required. The ability to develop collaborative relationships with the Investment Division is a key driver of success.
• Experience with quantitative software such as Matlab or R is an asset.
• In-depth knowledge of financial markets, as it applies to portfolio management. The ability to analyze financial market data in Excel, Access, Bloomberg, or equivalent is required.
• In-depth business acumen to understand driving factors of businesses in our Private Equity, Infrastructure and Real Estate portfolio.
• Effective writing and presentation skills to compose Memorandums and Presentations for the Risk Team and other stakeholders in the organization.

Please submit your application via Workday by September 4, 2024.
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. We know a diversity of backgrounds, cultures and perspectives are critical to creating long-term value. OPTrust is an organization engaged in building on our unique and diverse strengths. If you require an accommodation at any time during the recruitment process, or have preferred pronouns, please send a message to
careers@optrust.com
, or discuss your needs with the Recruitment Consultant during the telephone screen. We will do our best to work with you and provide appropriate accommodation.
We thank all interested applicants, however only those under consideration will be contacted

Please refer the Job description for details