Associate - Client Services

Account Onboarding and Transitions, Sr. Associate – Investment Management Operations

Morgan Stanley is a leading global financial services firm providing a wide range of investment banking, securities, investment management and wealth management services. The Firm's employees serve clients worldwide including corporations, governments and individuals from more than 1,200 offices in 43 countries. As a market leader, the talent and passion of our people is critical to our success. Together, we share a common set of values rooted in integrity, excellence and strong team ethic. Morgan Stanley can provide a superior foundation for building a professional career - a place for people to learn, to achieve and grow. A philosophy that balances personal lifestyles, perspectives, and needs is an important part of our culture.

Operations is one of the largest divisions in the firm and has diverse responsibilities, including correctly settling and recording millions of transactions per day, identifying and mitigating all operational risks, developing strong client relationships and partnering with technology to realize the full potential of IT and e-solutions. Throughout, the Operations department continually seeks ways to improve while actively supporting the development of new businesses, structures and markets.

Morgan Stanley Investment Management (IM) is a critical business within Morgan Stanley and is a leader in the global investment management business. IM Operations supports the equity, fixed income, multi-asset, liquidity and alternative businesses for IM, providing middle-office services including portfolio manager support, client services, portfolio transition management, market registration, product data and valuation oversight, and performance and attribution analysis, among others. IM Operations serves the firm's portfolio managers and associated teams by providing high quality support through excellence in processing, reporting, and management of strategic initiatives.

The Onboarding and Transitions Team plays an integral role in servicing clients and coordinating client and pooled vehicle events including, on-boarding of new business, account transitions and terminations. The team also facilitates the onboarding of derivative products where applicable. The team works closely with IM business stakeholders, outsourced vendors including the Investment Manager Solutions (IMS) team, counterparties and other external parties to ensure completion on all deliverables.

Morgan Stanley's Investment Management's product range is continually evolving into new product and strategy areas, demanding ever changing infrastructure and solutions. The Onboarding and Transitions Team facilitates discussions with all impacted parties to ensure that the appropriate support models are in place.

Primary Responsibilities

• Provide on-going support to the global Onboarding and Transitions team to help facilitate client and pooled vehicle events including onboarding, termination, custody transfer, in-specie transfer and other related transition activities.
• Obtain sign off from internal and external parties prior to funding, transition and termination of assigned accounts
• Work with Investment teams, Portfolio services to understand and prioritize market opening requirements per investment strategy
• Co-ordinate with client relationship managers, investment team and internal signatories to ensure timely completion of market opening along with relevant legalization requirements per jurisdiction as advised by custodians.
• Ensure stakeholders are made aware of progress with regular status updates and prompt responses to queries.
• Process market renewals prior to market expiry for jurisdictions in scope such as India, Indonesia, Egypt, Slovenia. Initiate market fee payments requests with internal teams where applicable
• Ensure that relevant notifications pertaining 'Material changes' are communicated to custodians in a timely manner
• Validate market status for investment team by reviewing the same with custodians and checking internal setup prior to the placement of a trade
• Work with custodians to complete documents related to sub custodian changes in local markets to ensure no impact to trading
• Respond to counterparty KYC (Know Your Client) requests related to periodic broker requirements and onboarding accounts for trading foreign currency and derivative products
• Coordinate and maintain Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs) by working with internal teams to gather proper documentation and processing on external vendor sites
• Coordinate pooled vehicle share class launches
• Set-up core accounts and sleeves on trading systems and other internal/external platforms
• Ensure global workflow tools are updated in a timely manner
• Track documentation related to global onboarding events (PPM, LPA, IMA, tax forms, formation documentation, etc.) and derivative product onboarding events (ISDAs, MSFTAs, futures agreements, repurchase agreements, etc,)
• Gather appropriate documentation for SSAE18 and other audits
• Other duties related to the support of the global Account Onboarding and Transitions Team

Skills Required

• A sound understanding of investment operations including mutual funds, preferably with a focus on client service and onboarding
• Strong attention to detail
• Excellent organizational and project management skills
• Strong verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to interact with multiple internal and external parties including clients, client relationship managers, legal, compliance, investment teams, sales, and other functional operations teams
• Ability to manage various tasks at once and work with several members of the team simultaneously
• Ability to work effectively with minimal supervision

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree (Business degree preferred) and a minimum of 4-6 years of experience in financial services operations
• Minimum of 3 years of experience working in an investment management context

At Morgan Stanley, we raise, manage and allocate capital for our clients – helping them reach their goals. We do it in a way that's differentiated – and we've done that for 90 years. Our values - putting clients first, doing the right thing, leading with exceptional ideas, committing to diversity and inclusion, and giving back - aren't just beliefs, they guide the decisions we make every day to do what's best for our clients, communities and more than 80,000 employees in 1,200 offices across 42 countries. At Morgan Stanley, you'll find an opportunity to work alongside the best and the brightest, in an environment where you are supported and empowered. Our teams are relentless collaborators and creative thinkers, fueled by their diverse backgrounds and experiences. We are proud to support our employees and their families at every point along their work-life journey, offering some of the most attractive and comprehensive employee benefits and perks in the industry. There's also ample opportunity to move about the business for those who show passion and grit in their work.