Purpose of Position

The Vice President, Fund Finance – Private Wealth, working alongside the Private Wealth team and the Pantheon investment teams, will play a central role in helping shape the operating activities of U.S. private wealth products and the design of the associated operating model. This will include working with the Head of Private Wealth Operations to establish a common operating platform from which Private Wealth funds will be supported, including any associated systems, finance, risk, valuation procedures, and other operational processes that may be required.

Key Responsibilities

• Support the Private Wealth and Investor Relations teams in client pitches, marketing materials and onboarding, as required.
• Partner with the Private Wealth and investment teams to provide financial and operational support to ensure that business objectives are met.
• Build, develop and maintain and develop good working relationships between the team and its internal/external clients and suppliers, including fund administrators, depositaries, bankers and transfer agents.
• Ensure that the operational and internal control frameworks are fit for purpose to service Pantheon’s U.S. semi-liquid/ Private Wealth funds adequately, and that the process by which we service those funds are following best practices.
• Critically assessing the funds’ operational servicing, how it can be improved in response to feedback from underlying clients, internal stakeholders and relative to the market with the intention of informing the most appropriate operational processes for the next generation of funds in the strategy. Inputting into operational strategy across funds and strategies.
• Chair or voting member of various Sub-Valuation Committees, ensuring valuations are reasonable, independent of the investment function and in accordance with Pantheon's Valuation Policy.
• Owning the NAV cycle and fund accounting review process, ensuring accuracy of NAV’s, maintaining all NAV performance data and that all deadlines are met.
• Ownership of tasks attaching to the financial statements of the fund, including liaising with the board of directors, legal, company secretary and fund administrators and ensuring that regulatory deadlines are met.
• Ownership of all regulatory reporting submissions and ensuring these are submitted in line with regulatory deadlines.
• Partnering with Pantheon’s Treasury and Fund Management Team to ensure that liquidity is appropriately managed, and that all subscriptions, redemptions and hedging activities are accounted for correctly within the NAV and financial statements of the funds.
• Management of external audits, which will include liaising with the funds’ external auditors and ensuring that audit queries are addressed and completed in line with deadlines.
• Provide supervision/ line management to more junior members of the team.
• Participation and preparation of analysis for any relevant committees and boards, for example, Fund boards, Operational Risk Committee, Valuations Committees, Investment Committee.
• Provide transaction support for acquisitions with potential tasks including assisting with the structuring advice, technical accounting, set-up of investment structures in accordance with tax advice, creation of new entities and close liaison with investment team to ensure transaction closing is achieved as planned.
• Attending the relevant investment team meetings to understand the current deal pipeline, future transactions and anticipating and coordinating any operational requirements.
• Working with Valuation Analytics to understand valuation specific considerations for the funds, and to ensure that there is adequate and independent oversight to the valuations process, including considering any impacts for Valuation Committee to consider and other committees as may be necessary or relevant.
• Ensure applicable policies are adhered to and that existing procedures/practices and processes are refined to reduce operational risk.
• Complete other ad-hoc projects and tasks from time to time.
• During the product design/concept stage, acting as the key point of contact for the below workstreams:
  • Key interface with the relevant investment teams to ensure that the investment opportunity is understood, and that the portfolio can be adequately monitored, reported on, and serviced.
  • Provide financial and operational support for the set-up of new structures including working with the structuring team, internal counsel, external advisors, and Private Equity team to ensure that operating frameworks are set up appropriately and service providers are appropriately selected and appointed.
  • Highlighting and communicating any issues to the Operations Team and working with them to update/change any process or other changes required to process, systems, etc to ensure adequate service delivery.
  • Working with Finance to quantify and design the framework for management and performance fee calculations, and to provide information on the costs of servicing specific mandates.

Knowledge and Experience Required

• Strategic Vision and Agility: The Individual will be able to think strategically, anticipate future consequences and trends, and incorporate them into the organisational plan.
• Customer Focus and Quality Service Delivery: The individual will be customer focused, with a background in fund accounting/ operations and passion for quality and efficiency.
• Process and Financial Mindset: The individual will have the ability to make tough calls to consistently deliver process efficiencies and cost discipline.
• Change Management and Collaborative Leadership: The individual will need to be a hands-on, dynamic collaborator with strong listening and teaming skills. He/she must understand the need to connect with, and listen to the requirements of the business, quickly demonstrating the ability to add value. In order to achieve results, qualities such as, personal flexibility, delivery orientation, energy, team orientation, strong influencing and people relationships will be required. She/he will have the ability to develop a strategic operational framework and execute collaboratively and effectively.
• Leadership and Organization: exceptional capacity for managing and leading peers; a team builder who has experience in scaling organizations; ability to connect staff both on an individual level and in large groups; capacity to enforce accountability, cultivate entrepreneurship, and learn the strengths and weaknesses of the team to put people in a position to succeed.
• Proven track record: of exceeding goals; evidence of the ability to consistently make good decisions through a combination of analysis, wisdom, experience, and judgment; high level of business acumen, including the ability to balance the delivery of strategies against the realities of a budget; problem solving, project management, and creative resourcefulness.
• Recognised accounting qualification, with strong accounting skills.
• Broad knowledge of Private Equity, semi-liquid products such as Interval and Tender funds and the processes involved in servicing these funds.