Associate Director, Alternative Strategies, Manager Research
The Group: Morningstar’s Research group provides independent analysis on individual securities, funds, markets, and portfolios. The Research group also provides data on hundreds of thousands of investment offerings, including stocks, mutual funds, and similar vehicles, along with real-time global market data on millions of equities, indexes, futures, options, commodities, and precious metals, in addition to foreign exchange and Treasury markets. Morningstar is one of the largest independent sources of fund, equity, and credit data and research in the world, and our advocacy for investors’ interests is the foundation of our company.
The Role: The Associate Director, Alternative Strategies, Manager Research will lead our research and ratings for alternative strategies in the North American Practice. The Associate Director is charged with driving the quality, consistency, timeliness, and efficacy of Morningstar’s alternatives manager research output. The Associate Director will also be responsible for defining the categorization of alternative strategies, representing our research offering to current and potential clients, and acting as a public representative of our mission, process, capabilities and research outcomes. The position is based in our Chicago office.
Responsibilities
- Lead the North American manager research alternatives research effort, conducting investment due diligence on alternatives managers across strategy types, producing high quality and timely manager research reports and editing those of your colleagues
- Help drive the development of a global structure and process for alternatives manager research in partnership with global colleagues, and develop scalable ways of delivering better services to our client segments
- Optimize alternatives coverage to balance stakeholder needs; actively participate in a ‘coverage committee’ to formalize coverage decision-making
- Review Morningstar’s alternative strategies classifications system, propose improvements, and oversee implementation
- Create clear, jargon-free educational pieces to inform investors about the workings of various alternative investment strategies
- Coordinate with the Practice lead to ensure clear employee KPIs in line with business goals
- Assist other analysts in formulating and defending our opinions on alternatives strategies and investment approaches through investment committee participation
- Provide ideas and input that enhance the research process, methodology, and products
- Increase ties with Morningstar Investment Management (IM) and push specialization to deepen subject-matter expertise
- Engage with the external market (media, wealth managers, regulators) to strengthen perceptions of Morningstar capabilities
- Work with Training Director(s) to ensure that Analysts are fully prepared to best represent themselves to institutional clients
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree; Chartered Financial Analyst® designation and/or MBA is desirable
- Ten-plus years of experience working in a manager research or related role
- Strong communication and planning skills
- Record of building successful research efforts and models is a plus
Please submit your resume and cover letter with your application materials.
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