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Asset Allocation Research Specialist #ASSET01800 Chicago, IL The Opportunity
Asset Allocation Research Specialist #ASSET01800 Chicago, IL The Opportunity
Asset Allocation Research Specialist #ASSET01800 Chicago, IL The Opportunity
Chicago, IL
The Opportunity:
Mesirow Financial is an independent, employee-owned firm founded in 1937. As specialists in
investment, risk management and advisory services, we are committed to helping our institutional,
corporate, and individual clients achieve their objectives. We are proud of Mesirow’s culture of fostering
team member engagement, entrepreneurship, and empowerment. Our positive culture, volunteerism, and
opportunity for advancement makes Mesirow one of the few employers to be included in both Chicago
Tribune’s Top Places to Work and Crain’s Best Places to Work in Chicago.
The Investment Strategies Group provides fiduciary partnership, investment management, asset
allocation, and guaranteed retirement income product allocation services to institutional clients in the
financial services industry, primarily in the defined contribution space. Recent growth in investment
management and retirement income opportunities has created a need for additional research capacity.
The role of the Asset Allocation Research Specialist is to work with the Chief Investment Officer/Director
of Research to provide multi-purpose research support for the group’s investment management priorities,
including taking the lead in client interactions. Areas of focus include strategic asset allocation and capital
market assumptions; understanding, operating, and improving existing quantitative financial processes;
and developing and implementing new quantitative financial models and optimization techniques.
Responsibilities:
Learn and document existing quantitative financial processes, including strategic asset allocation,
capital market assumptions, target date glide path development, and a simulation-based
optimization framework for portfolio construction with guaranteed retirement income products.
Spearhead the operation of these processes to update ongoing deliverables, conduct client
engagements, take the lead role in client interactions, and further enhance and improve the
processes as business needs dictate.
Develop new quantitative financial models, methods and algorithms to support strategic asset
allocation, capital market assumption, and glide path construction initiatives, using statistical
analysis, risk management techniques, simulation, and/or data mining approaches.
Maintain, enhance, and continue to develop these new quantitative financial models.
Meet with investment professionals within the Investment Strategies Group to interpret the
models’ findings and recommend changes in investment policy in response to the findings.
Evaluate and model alternative asset classes and conduct related asset allocation studies
suitable for both client-facing white papers and professional journal publication.
Apply complex financial theory to provide solutions to problems of an applied nature.
Requirements: