Private Client Investment Strategist

Overview

Bernstein has managed money for wealthy individuals, entrepreneurs, and non-profit entities for more than 50 years. Backed by a leading global research effort, the firm has built a strong long-term performance record since its founding in 1967 and has grown its private-client business to more than $100 billion in assets under management. Asset-gathering and client-servicing in the firm’s private-client business is handled by the firm’s approximately 225 Financial Advisors nationwide.

The Investment Strategy Team serves three functions: 1) Overseeing the Bernstein investment platform, creating strategic allocation advice and managing ongoing and new manager due diligence, 2) Supporting our Financial Advisors client servicing and marketing endeavors with our largest and most important existing and prospective clients 3) Creating all investment-related private client-driven communication, including quarterly servicing materials, blogs, podcasts and webinars.

Job Summary

We are looking to hire an Investment Strategist (IS) in Minneapolis, MN, Cleveland, OH, or Nashville, TN to help support the Midwest region, which includes offices in Minneapolis, Cleveland, and Nashville.

Essential aspects of a candidate’s skill set include knowledge of the financial markets, strong analytical skills, an effective interpersonal style, and a history of professional success. The IS should be able to digest a large array of investment content and translate that into clear, concise and compelling messaging for Financial Advisors and existing and potential clients.  Our openness to a variety of backgrounds is reflected in our existing Investment Strategy team’s diverse experiences, which include portfolio management, equity research, investment consulting and economic research.

Investment Strategy Team

The Investment Strategy team is a senior and highly impactful group within the Private Client Group. The team currently consists of 12 Senior Investment Strategists, with 4 located in New York, 1 in Washington D.C., 1 in Miami, 2 in Chicago, 1 in Dallas, 2 in San Francisco, and 1 in Los Angeles. The SIS team is supported by a team of 3 Quantitative Analysts and by a Research Associate, Fixed Income Specialist, Investment Analyst and Product Analyst.

The Investment Strategy Team focuses on the three main areas below:

Investment Platform

• Development, Oversight, and Optimization of a flexible and evolving investment platform. Identify and address areas of weakness on investment platform.

• Determine strategic asset allocation recommendations in consideration of current market environment and our own investment platform.

• Drive investment leadership of product innovation through a defined process and structure.

Commercial Impact

• Focus on essential commercial opportunities by partnering with advisors in meetings on their most important strategic external constituencies.

• Create communications to allow our advisors to independently service their core clients

• Improve advisor outcomes through training and external/internal support.

Brand Communication 

• Establish Bernstein as a premier producer of thought leadership on market, investment and asset allocation issues through development of timely, differentiated and tailored communications through all potential channels (e.g. blogs, podcasts, white papers).

• Oversee Portfolio Manager communication to ensure clear, thoughtful, and timely communications to both internal and external constituencies.

Position Specifications

The IS will go through an initial training period focused on ensuring excellent knowledge of our investment platform and strengthening communication skills. Once training is completed, the IS will act as a go-to investment platform expert for their respective location, supporting daily questions on portfolio and market performance and consistently delivering investment advice and content to internal and external audiences.

A major component of the position is the ability to analyze asset-allocation approaches, portfolio construction, and performance attribution.

Much time in this role will be spent in external meetings with clients and prospects providing our market perspective and/or focused on details of investments. Expected travel is approximately 20-30%.

Job Qualifications & Key Attributes

The ideal candidate should have:

• 8-10 years of experience in investment management.

• Direct relevant experience in and a broad understanding of the capital markets – including equity investing in domestic and international markets, hedge funds and other alternatives, fixed-income investing, fundamental and quantitative research, and risk management.

• FINRA series 7 & 63 licensing required.

• MBA in Finance and/or CFA is preferred.

• Outstanding presentation skills, in individual and large formats, and the ability to explain complex thoughts quickly and easily.

• Ability to work with a wide array of people and customize advice to individual client situations.

• Comfort with alternative products, as those remain a large area of growth for Bernstein private clients.

• Excellent communication skills, analytical, intellectually curious, client-service oriented, have a hunger to learn, be open to feedback, and able to work in a team-based culture.

• High integrity is essential, as IS’s must build strong relationship with Financial Advisors and members of the Investment Strategy team.