About the Opportunity

Job Description

Title                 Solutions Implementation Associate Director / Director

Department    Asset Management CAO

Location          London

Reports To      Head of APAC IM Services & Strategic Initiatives

Level:              7 / 8

We’re proud to have been helping our clients build better financial futures for over 50 years. How have we achieved this? By working together - and supporting each other - all over the world. So, join our team and feel like you’re part of something bigger. Our clients come from all walks of life and so do we.  We are proud of our inclusive culture and encourage applications from the widest mix of talent, whatever your age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, social background and more.

As a flexible employer, we trust our people to perform their role in the way that works best for them, our clients and our business. We are a disability-friendly company and  would  welcome  a  conversation  with  you  if  you  feel  you  might  benefit  from  any  reasonable adjustments to perform to the best of your ability during the recruitment process and beyond.

About your team

At the centre of Fidelity’s success is our approach to managing money, with the philosophy unchanged since we were founded. Our approach places first-hand, detailed research at the core of our decision making, ensuring that every security – whether equity or bond – is investigated in detail before being included in our funds. We subsequently build our funds from the bottom up, stock by stock, taking account of market trends but not being driven by them.

Fidelity International has investment management activities based out of London, Milan, Paris, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney, Shanghai and Toronto. A presence across key ‘investment centres’ ensures that we truly penetrate the business, economic, political and social landscapes in each region we operate. This local fluency, born primarily out of local staffing, is fused with a global investment philosophy and communications systems.

With close to 50 years’ experience managing equity portfolios, we offer institutional clients a broad range of investment solutions across the risk/return spectrum. Our distinctive active strategies extend across geographies, sectors, investment objectives (capital growth vs. income), risk spectrum, investment styles and market cap. They include long-only as well as long/short strategies.
 

About your role

The purpose of the role is to support the Solutions business at FIL to achieve its commercial growth ambitions whilst delivering growth scalably and with the appropriate degree of risk control.  The role will require developing a strong understanding of how Fidelity operates, an ability to work effectively with client facing staff, product, investment teams, operations and technology, as well as compliance, risk and audit. Given the global nature of the Solutions business and the regional variation in client, product, platform and regulatory requirements, the role will need to operate across both global and regional stakeholder groups, ensuring that local market needs are properly reflected while maintaining consistency with FIL’s global operating model. A detailed understanding of Fidelity’s investment capabilities, as well as the operational and technology capabilities needed to deliver Solutions is critical. An ability to connect people across functions, and the organisational discipline to create the documentation, workflow structure and governance needed to bring groups together and move priorities forward will be key. The role will require you to bring an informed view and set of recommendations to key stakeholders for consideration.

The position holder will be a problem solver and develop deep understanding of Solutions and its dependence on all areas of FIL, bringing together the right parts at the right time to deliver and have a client experience focus. A key attribute is understanding the need for timely delivery, often against timelines which are client driven, whilst focusing on scale and efficiency. While direct client-facing experience is helpful for understanding what creates a great client experience, the greater requirement is the ability to work with credibility and precision to align stakeholders, triage demand, provide recommended approaches, drive actions and ensure the operating backbone for Solutions is robust.

The role will work within the broader IM Services and Strategic Initiatives operating model, providing a structured coordination point between Solutions, Investment Management, Distribution, FIL Platforms and relevant regional stakeholders. It will help ensure that priorities, dependencies, risks and decision points are visible, well governed and escalated appropriately. This will include working across global platform and capability teams as well as regional business, product, distribution, investment and operational stakeholders, with a particular focus on translating regional requirements into scalable global delivery approaches.

Key stakeholders will include senior Solutions leadership, portfolio strategy and investment capability teams, platform and technology partners, distribution stakeholders, and relevant regional business and operational teams, with connectivity across these groups becoming particularly important once the triage process is established. The position holder will be expected to build credibility across geographies and seniority levels, balancing global consistency with the practical realities of regional execution.

Key responsibilities

Solutions

• Solutions triage: Work closely with the Portfolio Strategy, Solutions Design, Distribution & Investment teams to manage the pipeline of client opportunities as they emerge and iterate. Act as a sounding board & key partner for client facing staff and investment teams on the operational feasibility of different solution options (front to back) and work in collaboration to determine whether an opportunity should progress or not, or whether alternative solutions may be found to meet the client need. Alongside client facing staff, the role will work closely with investment teams, Distribution CAO, Asset Management CAO and FIL Platforms to understand what is possible within the current set of capabilities or what might need to be enhanced to successfully deliver the solution. Own the practical organisation, transparency, data and drive the decisions to ensure that FIL can make commercially sound decisions on the solutions pipeline.
• When solutions are complicated, step in to manage the process through to delivering the end outcome such that the client has a great client experience and internal stakeholders (Distribution, Investment teams, FIL platforms etc.) are engaged efficiently and effectively.
• Manage the pipeline and client interaction data such that transparency is high and such that we can learn and improve from past experiences.
• Maintain a single transparent pipeline view of Solutions activity, including prioritisation, dependencies, risks, owners, target timelines and key decision points.
• Establish clear governance, decision logs and escalation routes to support timely and well-documented decision-making across complex Solutions initiatives.
• Operate a structured triage process for Solutions priorities, ensuring requests are assessed, routed, documented and progressed consistently across the relevant platform, product, investment and operational teams.
• Act as a coordination bridge between global Solutions, platform and capability teams and regional stakeholders, ensuring that market-specific requirements, regulatory considerations and client priorities are understood, prioritised and reflected in delivery plans.
• Approach the role with a continuous improvement mindset, reviewing where FIL’s current approach can be improved. Collect feedback on key processes and improve them.

Portfolio Capabilities

• The role is expected to work primarily (but not solely) with the Multi-Asset (MA) investment team where most solutions are managed. MA faces many areas of change, new business, adjustments to reporting, launches and a breadth of IMAs and capability wrappers. Currently these are not managed in a centralised way, there is no clear ownership, and responsibilities are federated across Investment Directors or operational staff. The role will own the list of initiatives and look to drive consistency in approach and delivery, allowing other areas to focus on key client / growth / strategic initiatives.
• Provide structured coordination discipline where Multi-Asset and FIL currently needs stronger consistency in the set-up of new fund / solution / portfolio launches and cross-regional delivery processes.
• Drive consistency in approaches across these areas and make sure governance processes are well adhered to.
• Drive practical consistency in core deliverables such as IMAs, term sheets, launch documentation, operating workflows and requests into Solutions, ensuring ownership and hand-offs are clear.
• Ensure portfolio capability changes, launches, reporting adjustments and IMA-related activity are delivered in line with relevant risk, control, conduct and regulatory expectations.
• Develop repeatable processes, playbooks, standards and management reporting to improve consistency, auditability and scalability.

Strategic Operational & Technology needs for the Solutions Business

• Develop a strong commercial and client understanding of Solutions, both the current book of business, pipeline activity and future direction of client needs.
• Leveraging previous and your own analysis & experience develop a clear view of the operational and technology capabilities required to deliver Solutions scalably and in a risk-controlled manner.
• Work across the Asset Management CAO team, the Product teams, the Distribution CAO teams and with FIL Platforms (particularly with Asset Management Platforms, but will also require working across other FIL Platform teams) to ensure the current and future strategic operational and technology needs of the Solutions business are understood and appropriately considered from a prioritisation and delivery perspective.
• Represent regional Solutions requirements into global operating, platform and technology discussions, helping to ensure global delivery plans are informed by regional client, product, regulatory and operational realities.
• Develop a clear understanding of the current capability set (particularly across operations and technology end to end from research, through portfolio management into analytics and reporting) and the evolving future capability set to ensure effective triage of the commercial pipeline.
• Support & where needed educate other teams across AM CAO, Distribution CAO, Product and FIL Platforms to understand the current and future state of operational and technological capabilities supporting the Solutions business.
• Provide input via the appropriate channels to support the FIL Platforms change prioritisation process to ensure the priorities of the Solutions business are well articulated, understand and appropriately considered within delivery.

About you

• Strong structure, coordination, project management and execution skills with a focus on delivery and results. 
• Proven experience of identifying and implementing process improvements.

• Significant stakeholder management and organisational skills, with the ability to create strong documentation, workflow processes, governance routines and follow-through mechanisms that help multiple groups work together effectively.
• Client orientation, the ability to understand and operate in a manner that delivers a great client experience and a commitment to treat all clients equally whilst maintaining a focus on asset growth and retention.
• Ability to bring new perspectives and use technology to solve problems.
• Ensure stakeholder time is used efficiently.
• Skilled at navigating challenging and competing needs in a decisive but tactful manner, engendering respect and trust from colleagues to influence strategic objectives and execution.
• Ability to bring informed recommendation and actions to stakeholders and decision makers with a bias to action.
• Highly collaborative, with the ability to connect people, manage competing views, and bring teams together without relying on formal authority.
• Have or develop a detailed understanding of investment, operational & technology capabilities, including product development and delivery processes, sustainability and other regulatory requirements such that problem solving and commercial triage is well informed and based on knowledge.
• Strong attention to detail and execution discipline, balanced with strategic judgement to understand the broader Solutions and FIL strategic agenda and when issues need to be escalated.
• Ability to partner with a diverse set of stakeholders at all levels of seniority within Investment Management, FIL Platforms, Distribution and general across FIL.
• Experience working across global and regional teams, with the judgement to identify where consistency is required and where regional nuance, regulation or client need requires tailored execution.
• Ability to lead through influence, create alignment across senior stakeholders, mentor project contributors and build repeatable ways of working across teams.
• Solutions and multi-asset experience or strong familiarity with the multi-asset operating model is highly valuable given the role focus on Solutions, the majority of which are managed within the Multi-Asset investment team.
• Proficient at using data, technology and workflow automation to create transparency, reduce duplication and improve the efficiency of stakeholder engagement.
• Curiosity and practical judgement on how AI can be applied to the role and within Solutions to improve decision-making, documentation and operating efficiency.

Key outcomes and measures of success

• Improved transparency and prioritisation across the Solutions pipeline, with clear ownership, dependencies and decision points.
• More consistent and efficient delivery of portfolio capability changes, launches, reporting adjustments and platform-related initiatives.
• Better alignment between Solutions business priorities and FIL Platforms delivery capacity.
• Reduced duplication, clearer management reporting and improved stakeholder experience through scalable, data-led ways of working.

Feel rewarded

For starters, we’ll offer you a comprehensive benefits package. We’ll value your wellbeing and support your development. It’s all part of our commitment to making you feel motivated by the work you do and happy to be part of our team. For more about our work, our approach to dynamic working and how you could build your future here, visit careers.fidelityinternational.com.

For more about our work and how you could build your future here, visit careers.fidelityinternational.com.

As an international financial services organisation, we are in-scope of international regulations in the way that we carry out our work. This position is involved in work that is regulated by the FCA and/or the PRA and their Individual Conduct Rules (COCON) apply to it, along with any other regulation. We provide training on COCON and how it affects our employees. More information about COCON can be found in the Employment Handbook.