Valuations Associate

Valuations Associate
Job Description:

• Price securities in accordance with the firm’s established valuation policy and pricing matrix.
• Understand security characteristics in investment types such as bonds, loans, and structured product investments (ABS, CMBS, RMBS, CLO, etc.). Knowledge of derivatives such as options, swaptions, CDS, and CMBX is helpful.
• Conduct daily analytical reviews and problem-solving for securities’ pricing.
• Verify the accuracy of pricing feeds and their impacts on funds.
• Analyze and conduct reconciliations of daily/weekly/monthly pricing reports.
• Research and address new securities pricing, stale prices, price variances, and other tolerance breaks.
• Research prices for assets, validate pricing, and conduct quality control and monitoring.
• Interact with firm auditors, addressing valuation-related audit inquiries, and provide support to fund accounting on difficult, complex security issues/problems.
• Work in a cross-functional setting with various departments, including pricing vendors, auditors, broker relationships, administrators, and managed accounts.
• Interact with senior management, fund accounting, trading desk, legal/compliance, portfolio managers, analysts, tax, and other departments to research and understand security transactions and their pricing.
• Facilitate valuation committee meetings, create reports, and report on pricing results.
• Create ad-hoc reports and conduct research as requested by senior management and interested departments.
• Communicate with data vendors to gain commentary and understand prices, as well as challenge prices.
• Conduct pricing back-testing.

Desired Skills & Experience:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in accounting required.
• Experience at a CPA firm or as a fund administrator preferred.
• CPA preferred but not required.
• Proficiency with complex Excel spreadsheets and the Microsoft Office suite is required.
• Detail-oriented professional.
• Motivated self-starter.
• Highly organized.
• Ability to prioritize multiple responsibilities.
• Commitment to meeting deadlines.
• Effective communicator.