Should I take the job?

I am currently a risk analyst at a BB, primarily work in market risk monitoring/VaR analysis.

I have been offered an opportunity at a top AM firm (think Fidelity, Wellington) to work as a quant in investment risk (a division under quantitative research). The job will be quite different from what I was told.

I will be building multi-factor models (fundamental/macro) and also using existing vendor multi-factor models (Barra for instance) to perform analysis and explain portfolio exposure/positioning and bets to portfolio managers on a monthly basis. I will also be doing adhoc analysis for portfolio managers/sales guys to help them decompose and understand portfolio exposure. There will also be some ongoing development in the liquidity risk space and other model building.

First of all, should I make the jump? The base salary is the same and the bonus from what I am told will be 20-30%. Is the opportunity that much better than the one I am having now to warrant a jump only a little more than a year into the job?

What kind of career path does this type of position lead to?

What are the comp progressions like for this kind of job?

8 Comments
 

If you stay in risk, you're going to be getting risk-level comp for years to come even if you're amazing at your job. There are some hedge funds where risk is compensated near the level of portfolio management, but that's not the norm. If you're looking for the big bucks, you'll probably need to make the jump to portfolio some day, which is not impossible.

 
Best Response

I talked to the hiring manager on the phone and got more information..

Other stuff I will be working on include: Stress testing and research related to macro events for the portfolio managers (an example he gave was that the group did stress testing on the NAV of the Euro Bond Fund based on default events and portfolio allocation going forward) Customized attribution - I was told that the company has a performance team in the operations groups that churns out attribution reports from vendors but occasionally this group is asked to analyze how returns can actually be attributed using proprietary factor models

I am also a little confused when he told me the group does not really monitor risk, that the group's job is to explain and help portfolio manager understand risk/exposure and make sure they are making the bets they intend to make? What does that even mean? Does that mean that the group is pretty much irrelevant since it can't impose and enforce limit?

 
IEatYouI am also a little confused when he told me the group does not really monitor risk, that the group's job is to explain and help portfolio manager understand risk/exposure and make sure they are making the bets they intend to make? What does that even mean? Does that mean that the group is pretty much irrelevant since it can't impose and enforce limit?
You'll hear this from every risk department at any AM firms. They don't want to be seen as cops on the beat. They are more like consultants for the PMs.
 

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