Associate, Business Strategy (Product) - ETF & Index Investments

Description

About this role

Business Unit Overview

BlackRock's ETF and Index Investments (EII) business is the leading index investment engine. We help investors build better portfolios with the industry's leading suite of index investment tools. We enable investors to replace individual securities, to take short-term market views, to invest cash rapidly, to execute more efficiently than swaps, futures or individual bonds, to take long-term core positions and to construct efficient portfolios. We are the best in the world at building and managing efficient index tools for our clients. We serve every kind of investor: pensions, insurers, sovereign wealth funds, central banks, asset managers, wealth advisors and individual investors.

Team context

Business Strategy sits at the heart of strategic decision-making within EII EMEA. Partnering with other teams across the broader EII organisation - including Product, iSW Sales, and Global Markets - Business Strategy helps to solve some of EII's biggest business challenges. The team is relied upon by EII leadership in EMEA and globally as well as the broader organisation to run projects, digest complex information and communicate it in a straightforward and action-oriented manner.

With an emphasis on fact-based decision making and challenging the status quo where it pushes the business forward, our team partners with the EII EMEA Executive Committee to chart both the long-term direction and short-medium term priorities for the business. The team offers an excellent platform to learn about elements of our business, build and enhance transferrable skills across the strategy toolkit, and gain significant exposure to leadership. Business Strategy is split across 3 pillars: (1) Client strategy is focused on understanding client needs and delivering on initiatives to drive index penetration (2) Product strategy supports development and delivery of our Index range to ensure we maintain a world-class index offering (3) Business Intelligence is responsible for understanding iShares, industry, and competitor performance including drivers of growth and developing recommendations to accelerate growth.

Job Purpose/Background

The Associate will play a critical role within the Product Strategy pillar of the team and will be central to delivering impactful strategy projects and contributing to the success of our product businesses. Associates typically own workstreams within broader projects, and work in cross-functional teams to deliver a successful outcome. Associates enjoy a high degree of freedom in their work, and are challenged to roll up their sleeves, immerse themselves in a topic, demonstrate curiosity to understand the finer details and provoke thinking of others, and ultimately provide elegant solutions to complex problems.

The role demands analytical and logical abilities to deconstruct complex business problems into components and conduct analyses and interviews to derive a solution. This individual will partner with stakeholders and work across index wrappers (ETFs, Index Mutual Funds and Mandates) to regularly analyse our range, solve business problems, provide updates to senior leadership, and explore areas for future growth.

Key Responsibilities

Under the direction of senior team members, deliver strategy projects on priority topics for the business:

• Develop working knowledge of our 6 key product segments across ETFs (Fixed Income, Core Equities, Precision Equities, Factors, Thematics and Sustainable), plus index mutual funds and mandates
• Understand drivers of performance and growth across product ranges, clients and geographies and actively seek creative growth opportunities to explore for product segments
• Structure work streams, define approach, identify stakeholders, conduct research / interviews
• Generate hypotheses on business problems, and identify the information required to validate them
• Navigate datasets; gather and synthesize information from multiple external sources (such as industry research, financial publications, field sales, events etc...) and conduct fact-based analyses to draw conclusions and actionable insights
• Engage senior team members in problem solving sessions and on potential issues along the way
• Create impactful reports/presentations to communicate with BlackRock and iShares management on project progress and conclusions; produce top-quality presentation decks for internal and external presentations
• Build regional and global connectivity with EII product and strategy teams and collaborate with other product teams across BlackRock (e.g. Fundamental Active Equities, Wealth Product Group, Global Product Group, Virtual Fixed Income, Global Fixed Income etc.)
• Show interest/engagement in topics beyond current project priorities: provide insights and views to other projects and become sounding board for team members

Experience/Skills

• Strong understanding of the Asset Management industry and general understanding of the ETF landscape a plus
• 3-5+ years' experience in financial services; experience in a similar product role or experience at a tier 1 management consultancy firm, or within an internal strategy division at a global organisation
• First-class undergraduate degree from a top-tier university; graduate degree and/or professional finance qualifications preferred
• Ability to engage diverse set of stakeholders, build long-term relationships to collaborate on an ongoing basis
• Experience in working with senior management, with the ability to translate complex views and opinions into straightforward, tangible deliverables and insights
• Strong conceptual and analytical problem-solving skills with ability to deconstruct complex problems and ideas into actionable pieces of analysis
• Ability to efficiently manage and prioritise own time and efforts to deliver analysis and insights at pace
• Demonstrates creativity, intellectual curiosity, and strong ownership mindset; candidate should be a self-starter and motivated to go above and beyond to deliver impact
• Advanced Excel and PowerPoint skills essential - able to quickly produce management-level quality presentations and robust Excel models (forecasting, sensitivity analysis, data synthesis)

Our benefits

To help you stay energized, engaged and inspired, we offer a wide range of benefits including a strong retirement plan, tuition reimbursement, comprehensive healthcare, support for working parents and Flexible Time Off (FTO) so you can relax, recharge and be there for the people you care about.

Our hybrid work pilot

BlackRock's current hybrid work pilot is designed to help you experience the best of both worlds: the opportunity to connect with colleagues in person and the flexibility to work remotely, with greater time to focus on what's important to you. In line with local health guidance and regulations, employees are generally expected to work 3 days in the office and 2 days from home (on average) each week. For some business groups, more time may be required in the office, while greater flexibility may be in place for others. Our "One BlackRock" culture means you'll be supported to collaborate with your new colleagues while bringing your full self to work - wherever you are.

The health, safety and well-being of our people will always be our top priorities; we will continue to monitor local conditions and health advisories in making decisions about our work environments.

About BlackRock

At BlackRock, we are all connected by one mission: to help more and more people experience financial well-being. Our clients, and the people they serve, are saving for retirement, paying for their children's educations, buying homes and starting businesses. Their investments also help to strengthen the global economy: support businesses small and large; finance infrastructure projects that connect and power cities; and facilitate innovations that drive progress.

This mission would not be possible without our smartest investment - the one we make in our employees. It's why we're dedicated to creating an environment where our colleagues feel welcomed, valued and supported with networks, benefits and development opportunities to help them thrive.

For additional information on BlackRock, please visit careers.blackrock.com | www.blackrock.com/corporate | Instagram: @blackrock | Twitter: @blackrock | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/blackrock

BlackRock is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to age, disability, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation and other protected characteristics at law.