Current Openings at Apex Group

Summary of the position

• The Senior Manager, UK Operations – Open Ended Funds (GSC) role involves functional leadership for all clients, funds, and portfolio-specific processes involved in the end-to-end administration of UK-domiciled funds as serviced from South Africa on Invest One accounting system which includes regulated and listed funds.
• This position is responsible for managing, measuring, and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the UK business unit within the SA Open Ended operations, ensuring the timely and compliant delivery of services to the UK administrator, appointed Manco, depositories and external clients in accordance with regulatory standards.

The services and oversight responsibilities associated with this position primarily include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Trade Processing and Trade Confirmations & Settlements services involve trade capture in NXM and Invest One, live trade confirmation and settlement through the OMGEO/STP Confirms app, and managing trade exceptions based on client trade source files via X-Ceptor.
• Overseeing the integration of trade files across various systems to ensure that all received instructions are accounted for in valuations.
• Oversight of market data activities, including security setup, security valuations, and corporate actions processing.
• Supervision of daily cash and scrip reconciliations services, ensuring regular monitoring of discrepancies and resolution of aged or material items.
• NAV valuation and accounting activities include processing contributions and withdrawals, calculating fee accruals, and determining both estimated and actual income distribution rates as part of the NAV price calculations. Additionally, this involves performing NAV reviews, managing exceptions, and preparing monthly and ad-hoc invoices for payment by the depository in line with the SLA.
• Fund reporting activities include preparation of trustee reconciliation packs for all regulated funds within agreed SLA timeframes and distributing the reconciliation packs to the depository, addressing queries related to trustee certificates and letters, and preparing board papers as required.
• Managing the relationship with UK entities serviced by SA, ensuring consistent collaboration and oversight reporting to the UK-based operations teams and escalations as required.
• Ensuring that errors are promptly identified, escalated to all relevant parties, and managed in compliance with the SLA and FCA – COLL guidelines.
• Engagement with local operations and ICT teams to enhance operational efficiencies and services.
• Ensuring compliance with risk management policies and practices to meet both Group and local requirement.
• Ensuring monthly KPI reports are produced with input from respective operational stakeholders and shared with UK.
• Overseeing the issue and actions log to ensure open actions are resolved and items discussed in service meetings.
• Overseeing timely and effective responses to warehouse reporting queries related to UK funds.

Outline of main duties and responsibilities

The Senior Manager, UK Operations – Open Ended Funds (GSC) will be expected to:

• Provide strategic leadership to the business unit, ensuring close collaboration and alignment of the operating model between the UK and SA, as well as within the Open-Ended product across jurisdictions
• Drive the continued development of the UK business within the SA global service center, enhancing the efficiency of centralized operational services to accommodate the onboarding of more clients in SA.
• Act as the primary accountable owner for the service quality of the UK business unit, overseeing both external and internal client relations, and handling any significant escalations from clients regarding service delivery.
• Drive the implementation of further efficiencies in the operational area by improving the technical skills of people, improving the controls of processes, and increasing the automation of operations with technology.
• Drive the implementation of improvements in the way of work within the new combined UK Operational team, striving for a frictionless communication process within the team that results in minimal delays in handoffs and response between individuals.
• Drive the implementation of an operational quality control framework in the business unit in line with the functional and regulatory requirements and in order to minimize operational risk.
• Ensure the delivery of high service quality standards to both external and internal clients in line with the agreed SLA, by organizing regular meetings between internal teams and between SA and UK, tracking and resolving open items, keeping breach registers up to date, and responding to client satisfaction feedback.
• Ensure service delivery issues and challenges in the business unit are managed and dealt with in a timely and efficient manner.
• Ensure adherence to all operational controls, policies, and standard operating procedures relevant to the UK business unit.
• Develop strong and trusted relationships with external and internal clients and set and maintain standard for the quality of the business unit's engagement with clients.
• Monitor operational risk for the business unit respective teams by ensuring incidents are managed and dealt with in a timely and efficient manner.
• Demonstrate technical and management leadership in the subject of various services and be a key representative of Apex on this with external and internal clients.
• Implement internal controls to strengthen control framework and to reduce operational and business risks for the business unit.
• Ensure audit findings and depository queries relating to this business unit are appropriately responded to and addressed in a timely manner.
• Ensure UK clients are accurately and timeously invoiced to ensure alignment with budgets.
• Ensure experienced staff are recruited at Manager and lower level in this business unit to discharge daily functional activities of their responsible teams to meet SLA.
• Manage and build out key performance indicators (‘KPIs’), targets and measures of success for the business unit and manage performance against these; and deliver towards them.
• Produce monthly management reporting packs for UK Operations department to the Regional Head – Fund Accounting (Africa) detailing key performance indicators for your area.

Skills and experience required

• Extensive operational leadership experience within the broader Open-Ended product and/or Financial Services industry, with a minimum of 3 years’ experience working with UK-domiciled funds.
• At least 8 years of work experience in the Open-Ended product sector and a minimum of a bachelor’s degree.
• • A relevant accounting qualification (e.g., CA, ACCA, CIMA) or an equivalent investment management qualification (e.g., CFA) is advantageous.
• Proven leadership qualities with a minimum of 3 years of direct or indirect management experience, demonstrating the ability to lead various operational teams and ensure the achievement of departmental strategic targets and objectives.
• Strong project management capability with a practical hands-on approach and the ability to ‘get things done’;
• Strong business acumen with excellent numeracy, logical and analytical approaches, with the ability to work and manage deliverables independently.
• Strong technical knowledge of the middle and back-office services and processes, and a good understanding of the upstream and downstream processes and risks.
• Specific technical knowledge of the UK Open-Ended fund administration SLA and operational process and reporting requirements would be advantageous.
• The ability to design new processes and conceptualize and assist in the development of systems to support those processes.
• Prior experience in liaising with internal and external clients under outsourcing arrangements.
• Previous experience in managing, developing and motivating teams and driving a high-performance culture.
• Experience in managing large teams both local and remote.

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Summary

• We are seeking a highly accomplished and visionary Business Intelligence Developer to join our team. As a BI Developer, you will report into the Business Intelligence Manager and be responsible for developing and maintaining BI and Reporting solutions. 

The Role & Key Responsibilities: 

The Senior BI Developer will be expected to,

• Work with both Business Analysts and business owners to development of new reports and dashboards and the enhancement of existing reports and dashboards.
• Performance tuning of stored procedures and reports
• Assist the Business Analysts to investigate issues and help them in their data analysis.
• Be on regular after-hour stand-by support for the data warehouse loads.
• Ensure that development standards and processes are followed according to Apex’s best practices.

Skills Required:

• A degree or diploma (3 years) with majors Information Systems or Computer Science will be a strong advantage.
• A good working knowledge of IT systems in a corporate environment.
• At least 5 years of solid SQL Server development experience, with proficiency in report writing skills.  This includes but not limited to building complex stored procedures, functions, and views. 
• At least 5 years’ experience in building integration solutions independently.
• Strong attention to accuracy and detail.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, including an ability to work independently from the business analyst team when appropriate.
• A high tolerance for ambiguity as requirements is not always clear at the start of a project and can change as users and analysts start to see the data.
• Self-starter who can take the initiative to learn new technologies independently, and not just wait to be sent on training.
• Solid time management and communication skills essential.
• Ability to multi-task and to work on multiple project streams simultaneously.
• High personal integrity.
• The below skills are not an absolute requirement but would give the candidate a significant advantage over others.
• Scheduling tools such Control-m
• Cloud based database solutions like Snowflake
• Cloud based ETL solutions like DBT
• A background in Investment and Financial Accounting

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Description 

• We are seeking a Fund Accountant, reporting to a Manager within the Fund Accounting Division of Apex to prepare accurate portfolio valuations and financial statements. The Fund Accountant role involves preparations of accurate portfolio valuations on a timely basis. You will typically be responsible for the accounting of a number of portfolios. Maintain the underlying accounting records for assigned funds (including domestic, offshore, hedge funds, partnerships, etc.). Seasoned incumbent responsible for approximately 3 to 6 valuations. 

Job specification   

• Prepare daily, weekly and/or monthly portfolio valuations. 
• Maintain the underlying accounting records for assigned funds. 
• Liaise with fund managers, brokers and custodians to communicate information and resolve issues on a timely basis. 
• Reconcile brokerage and custodian accounts to underlying records. 
• Establish excellent client relationships and provide a quality service at all times. 
• Assist the external auditors to ensure the audit function is executed on a timely and efficient basis. 
• Assist Senior Fund Accountants and Supervisors with audit queries. 
• Periodically assists with reviews and the identification of errors and inconsistencies. 
• Confident, enthusiastic, and self-motivated. 

Skills Required: 

• Commerce, Honors or Bus Sci Degree with Financial Accounting. 
• Excellent interpersonal and teamwork skills. 
• Structured and detail oriented. 
• Excellent customer service and communication skills. 
• Ability to prioritize work and meet strict deadlines. 
• Good analytical and problem-solving skills. 
• At least 2 years’ related experience. 
• Proficient in MS Excel. 
• Hedge fund industry knowledge would be a distinct advantage.