AM institutional client servicing role
anyone have any insight on AM institutional client servicing roles? what is the perception of these roles from on the street/prestige? exit opportunities?
also, specifically a role as an account associate at PIMCO. any insight on this? career track? exit ops? prestige?
At most buyside firms employees can generally be categorized into 3 buckets: Investment Professionals, Operations, and Investor Relations.
Investment profs are obviously the research analysts, PMs, traders, etc. Operations could range from the risk manager all the way down to admins. Performance analysts/associates are also usually in this group. Investor relations include marketing, and the client relationship management people. It sounds like you will fall into this group.
As far as exit opps, you need to think of the skills you will be acquiring. Your skill set will not lend itself to IBD/research because you most likely will not be doing hard analysis. You will be evaluated by future employers on how well you interact with clients, and how "bigtime" those clients are. I could see you jumping from PIMCO (a very well respected bond manager for very "bigtime" clients) to a HF or PE shop's investor relations team after 2-3 years.
As far as Prestige goes... again PIMCO is a big dog in the fixed income world... so you can probably look down on your investor relations peers in all but a few other places. However, I'm not sure you can say that investor relations type roles are more prestigious than investment prof roles. At the risk of being crucified by all IR and Ops employees on this forum, I base that opinion on the simple fact that GENERALLY investment profs are more highly paid. Again, not saying it's a bad job - certainly not - but if I have to make a sweeping generalization, this type of role is less desirable than an investment prof role in my opinion.
Disagree, unless by performance analyst you mean people who do the performance reporting (similar to PNL in trading). At my firm, performance attribution falls under portfolio analysis/construction team. I am in investment research and I definitely consider the performance attribution people as my peers and fall under the same investment organization.
great info. don't mean to thread jack...but where would you say product management fits in? and do you think it is possible to jump from product management to PM?[/quote]You'd have to be a little more specific for me about what you mean by product management.
Product Management does not fit into any of those buckets, they are a completely separate group. Product includes capital markets, competitive analytics, product strategy, etc... pretty much everything about the funds after they are launched. It is a good place to be, and I've seen people move from product to PM as well as IR. It allows for a good transition to either because in product you really dive deep into the funds and you understand whats not working and what can be improved. I've seen a lot of people move from product management to research and product development. It also allows for a transition to IR because you explain what's going on with the funds to the business development guys, and sometimes they'll bring you onto calls or into meetings where you're pretty much doing their work.
I agree with the natural switch to IR, but not sure I agree with the move to PM. Obviously it can happen, and it has happened, but the likelihood are pretty darn low, especially at big investment managers. When you have more than at least a quarter of the analysts in the firm gunning for a PM spot (and trust me there are always less PM spots available than the number of analyst who want to switch onto the PM track), I don't see the rationale behind giving that spot to a product management guy over the research analyst, unless the former is an absolute superstar.
When i say PM i meant portfolio management as in the group as a whole, not PM track. So someone from product might go into research or trading or development which all falls under PMG
thats for all the input everyone. very informative
another question i have is between in terms of client facing roles, how are client servicing vs. marketing roles perceived? is one more prestigious than the other? seems like the would potentially be more pay in marketing (commission) but a concern i have is that if i start in marketing, i will be branded as a salesman and not be able to cross over in the servicing side...
any input is welcome. but my general idea is that ultimately everything is all about marketing your firms products in the end...
Performance Analyst sit in the same floor with investment managers for my firm
you mean the performance attribution guys right? The term "performance analyst" is kinda unclear in this thread, while some use it to refer to performance reporting people, and other use it to prefer to performance attribution analysts. The former is strictly operational, and is a pretty low level job, while the latter is part of the investment organization in most firms.
If you mean performance attribution, I definitely agree. In fact, as a quant research analyst, I work with our performance attribution/portfolio construction team very regularly.
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