Client Relationship Manager

William Blair Investment Management is committed to building enduring relationships with our clients. We work closely with private and public pension funds, insurance companies, endowments, foundations, and sovereign wealth funds, as well as financial advisors. We are 100% active-employee-owned with broad-based ownership. Our investment teams are solely focused on active management and employ disciplined, analytical research processes across a wide range of strategies, including U.S. equity, non-U.S. equity, U.S. fixed income, emerging markets debt, and multi-asset. William Blair is based in Chicago with global resources providing expertise and solutions to meet our clients’ evolving needs.

William Blair is seeking a highly motivated Client Relationship Manager to join our established Client Services team. The Client Relationship Manager is responsible for building strong relationships with our Canadian institutional accounts to ensure account retention and promote the cross-sale of additional investment products and services. This individual will interact with clients regularly to stay on top of needs and concerns and to educate clients on current market trends, research and pertinent data.  

Responsibilities include but may not be limited to:

• Enhance relationships with key large and medium-sized institutional clients through proactive, ongoing interactions to foster account retention. 
• Leverage a thorough knowledge of client investment strategy, account performance and market developments, combined with broad William Blair product knowledge to promote the sale of additional strategies.
• Implement transactions and client requests in an accurate and timely manner.
• Provide direction and coordinate all sales and support efforts of Client Service Associates and others working on key client relationships to ensure a unified, high quality message and approach to all client interactions.
• Work closely with sales and product specialists to coordinate all new sales and support activities for newly assigned accounts to ensure a unified, high quality message and approach to all client interactions.
• Mentor junior level staff in how to develop and reinforce relationships with clients.
• Convey solid investment experience, knowledge of William Blair’s investment products and services, as well as a high degree of professionalism and poise in client review meetings.
• Provide all necessary support to retain key institutional clients and achieve cross-sell goals for existing client base. Work with Sales to generate leads and assist in the sales process.
• Additional responsibilities as requested.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree required.
• MBA or other advanced financial degree preferred.
• CFA or significant progress towards a CFA required.
• 5-7 years of directly related experience in Portfolio Management, Sales and Marketing or Relationship Management required.
  o    Previous experience working in the Canadian institutional marketplace preferred.
• Series 7 and 66 (or 63 and 65) licenses required or must be obtained within 90 days of start date.
• Extensive experience in managing complex investment expectations.
• Broad knowledge of capital markets and economics.
• Demonstrated ability to work in a team environment.
• Experience in making presentations to institutional investors.
• In-depth knowledge of investment strategies.
• Ability to deliver clear, effective communication and take responsibility for understanding others.
• Ability to build and maintain working relationships with others to achieve objectives.
• Dedication to detail and follow-up.
• Bilingual English/French preferred.