Eastspring is a global asset manager with Asia at its core. We create a culture in which diversity is celebrated and inclusion assured, for our colleagues, customers, and partners. We provide a platform for our people to do their best work and make an impact to the business, and in exchange, we support our people's career ambitions. We pledge to make Eastspring a place where you can Connect, Grow and Succeed.
.
.
KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES
Candidate Experience Profile:
The successful candidate should bring broad experience supporting diverse investment mandates spanning active & passive equities, active & passive fixed income, tactical asset allocation (TAA) and multi-asset strategies. This breadth should enable the role holder to understand differing portfolio objectives, liquidity profiles, implementation constraints and execution requirements across investment teams and client mandates.
This should be complemented by strong cross-asset trading expertise across equities, fixed income, foreign exchange and both listed and OTC derivatives, together with practical knowledge of instruments including futures, options, total return swaps (TRS), credit default swaps (CDS), interest rate swaps (IRS), cross-currency swaps (CCS) and bond forwards.
The role also requires demonstrated capability to lead complex, cross-functional execution programmes, with increasing emphasis on ETF platform development and product launches. This includes coordinating dealing readiness across portfolio management, capital markets, product, operations, technology, risk, compliance, legal, custodians, authorised participants, market makers and trading venues; establishing scalable execution, creation/redemption and liquidity-support arrangements; and embedding effective controls, governance and post-launch monitoring.
Role Purpose:
Lead the firm’s dealing function and provide a consistent, high-quality execution capability across asset classes, markets and diverse investment mandates, including active and passive equities, fixed income, tactical asset allocation and multi-asset strategies. The role is accountable for best execution, cross-asset trading, trading governance, counterparty oversight, team leadership and the ongoing development of the dealing operating model. It also provides senior execution leadership for ETF platform development, product launches and other complex strategic programmes. The role partners with portfolio management, capital markets, product, investment risk, compliance, operations, technology and legal teams to deliver efficient implementation of investment decisions while protecting clients and the firm.
Key Outcomes:
- Client orders are executed fairly, efficiently and in accordance with the firm’s best execution policy, client mandates and applicable laws and regulations.
- Execution quality is demonstrably monitored through relevant data, transaction-cost analysis and documented governance, with issues identified, escalated and remediated promptly.
- The dealing platform is resilient, scalable and appropriately controlled across people, processes, systems, data, counterparties and outsourced arrangements.
- Portfolio managers receive high-quality market intelligence, implementation advice and transparent feedback on liquidity, capacity, cost and execution risk.
- The dealing team has clear accountability, strong technical depth, effective succession coverage and a culture of challenge, integrity and continuous improvement.
Accountabilities:
1. Execution leadership and investment implementation
- Lead and oversee order execution across relevant asset classes, instruments, trading venues and markets, ensuring appropriate prioritisation, allocation and handling of orders.
- Set execution strategy and standards, balancing price, cost, speed, likelihood of execution and settlement, market impact, liquidity, counterparty risk and client-specific constraints.
- Provide portfolio managers with informed advice on implementation approach, liquidity conditions, market structure, execution timing and material trading risks.
- Oversee complex, sensitive or high-risk transactions and ensure clear escalation where market conditions, liquidity or operational limitations could affect client outcomes.
- Promote fair and consistent treatment of clients, including robust controls over aggregation, allocation, cross trades, restricted securities and potential conflicts of interest.
2. Best execution and execution-quality governance
- Own and maintain the firm’s best execution framework and dealing procedures, in partnership with Compliance, Legal, Investment Risk and Operations.
- Establish a proportionate monitoring framework using transaction-cost analysis, pre- and post-trade analytics, exception indicators and qualitative review.
- Chair or provide substantive input to relevant broker, counterparty, execution and investment governance forums; present clear management information, trends, breaches and remediation.
- Ensure execution arrangements, venues, algorithms, counterparties and trading protocols are reviewed periodically and remain appropriate for the firm’s products, markets and clients.
- Maintain evidence supporting execution decisions and policy compliance, including defensible treatment of instruments or markets where quantitative comparison is limited.
3. ETF and strategic programme execution
- Provide senior dealing leadership for other complex investment-product, market-access, regulatory, technology and operating-model programmes.
- Oversee post-launch stabilisation and review, using execution, liquidity and operational data to identify improvements and support scalable growth of the ETF platform.
- Define launch criteria, testing requirements, controls, escalation paths and management information, and ensure issues are resolved before go-live.
- Coordinate readiness across authorised participants, market makers, brokers, exchanges, custodians, fund administration, operations, technology, risk, compliance, legal and product teams.
- Partner with ETF portfolio management and capital-markets stakeholders on primary- and secondary-market operating arrangements, liquidity, spreads, execution protocols, basket handling and creation/redemption processes.
- Lead dealing workstreams for ETF launches, conversions and platform enhancements, ensuring execution readiness is integrated into the end-to-end product implementation plan.
- Promote a culture of assessing Risk vs Nav pricing on ETFs to ensure optimal execution
- Work closely with ETF Capital Markets to promote accountability through periodic broker reviews across marker makers, authorized participants and banks. All partner brokers have an ETF support line item in the list of partnerships asks.
4. Data-Driven Best Execution and Transaction Cost Analysis
- Demonstrated expertise in designing and applying rigorous pre- and post-trade transaction cost analysis (TCA) frameworks, including implementation shortfall, opportunity cost, market impact, adverse selection, and broker and algorithm performance attribution.
- Proven ability to translate execution analytics into actionable changes to trading strategies, broker selection, algorithm usage, and execution processes.
- Evidence of delivering measurable improvements in execution quality and investment outcomes, beyond the development of reporting or monitoring dashboards.
5. Quantitative Investment Mindset and Alpha Preservation
- Strong understanding of quantitative investment processes, including alpha decay, portfolio turnover, execution urgency, liquidity and capacity constraints, and the interaction between portfolio construction and trade execution.
- Ability to assess how execution choices affect realised alpha, transaction costs, tracking error, capacity, and overall portfolio performance.
- Demonstrated ability to work as an active partner to quantitative researchers and portfolio managers, incorporating implementation considerations into the investment process rather than operating solely as a downstream order executor.
6. Electronic and Algorithmic Execution Expertise
- Substantial hands-on experience with execution management systems, broker algorithms, smart order routing, crossing mechanisms, market-impact models, and systematic portfolio rebalancing.
- Strong understanding of algorithmic execution strategies and the ability to determine when systematic execution is appropriate versus when trader discretion can add value.
- Ability to adapt execution strategies to different alpha horizons, liquidity profiles, market conditions, order characteristics, and portfolio objectives.
7. Multi-Asset Execution Capability
- Strong execution expertise across quantitative equities and fixed income, with a clear understanding of the structural differences between exchange-based equity markets and dealer-intermediated fixed-income markets.
- Practical knowledge of electronic execution, RFQ protocols, portfolio trading, dealer axes, liquidity discovery, government bonds, credit instruments, and relevant derivatives.
- Ability to design and operate execution approaches appropriate to each asset class, recognising that systematic fixed-income strategies require different liquidity, pricing, workflow, and trading architectures from systematic equity strategies.
8. Counterparty and broker management
- Lead broker and counterparty selection, onboarding, review and performance assessment, applying transparent criteria and appropriate segregation of duties.
- Monitor execution performance, research and service quality, operational reliability, concentration, credit and conduct considerations, and ensure concerns are documented and addressed.
- Maintain professional, appropriately governed relationships with brokers, venues, liquidity providers and other external partners, avoiding actual or perceived inducements or conflicts.
- Contribute to commission, research payment and broker review governance where relevant to the firm’s operating model and regulatory obligations.
9. Risk, compliance and control environment
- Act as senior owner for dealing risks and controls, ensuring clear risk identification, control design, testing, issue management and escalation.
- Ensure compliance with trading restrictions, market conduct requirements, information barriers, personal account dealing requirements and applicable client or product constraints.
- Oversee incident and breach management, including timely containment, investigation, root-cause analysis, client-impact assessment and sustainable remediation.
- Maintain effective business continuity and disaster-recovery arrangements for the dealing function, including alternate dealing capability and periodic testing.
- Support regulatory enquiries, internal and external audits, client due diligence, RFPs and assurance reviews with accurate, timely and well-evidenced responses.
10. Operating model, technology and data
- Define the target operating model for dealing, including role clarity across central and local teams, hand-offs with portfolio management and operations, and governance of any delegated or outsourced activity.
- Sponsor enhancements to order and execution management systems, analytics, market data, automation and workflow tools, ensuring changes are controlled and aligned to investment needs.
- Improve data quality, straight-through processing and management information, while reducing manual intervention and key-person dependency.
- Work with Technology, Operations and vendors to prioritise incidents, upgrades and strategic change, with appropriate testing, implementation and post-change review.
- Assess emerging market structure, electronic trading and automation developments, adopting solutions where they improve client outcomes, risk management or scalability.
11. People leadership and culture
- Lead, coach and develop a high-performing multi-asset dealing team with clear objectives, decision rights, performance standards and development plans.
- Build succession and resilience through cross-training, documented coverage, talent development and disciplined capacity planning.
- Create a culture in which dealers exercise sound judgement, challenge constructively, escalate early and place client interests, market integrity and risk discipline first.
- Ensure required technical, regulatory and conduct training is completed and translated into day-to-day practice.
12. Enterprise and stakeholder leadership
- Partner with the CIO, investment leadership and portfolio management teams on investment implementation, capacity, product development and strategic priorities.
- Engage constructively with local business units and regional or global stakeholders to promote consistent standards while recognising legitimate market-specific requirements.
- Provide senior leadership with concise insight on liquidity, execution conditions, dealing risks, platform capability and material market developments.
- Represent the dealing function in client, consultant, due-diligence and regulatory engagements where appropriate.
Decision Rights:
- Set dealing standards, procedures and day-to-day execution protocols within approved investment, risk and compliance frameworks.
- Approve or recommend brokers, counterparties, venues, algorithms and execution methods in line with governance requirements.
- Pause, redirect or escalate trading where client interests, market integrity, operational resilience, compliance or counterparty risk may be compromised.
- Prioritise dealing resources and functional change initiatives within agreed budgets and governance.
- Escalate policy exceptions, material incidents, control weaknesses and unresolved stakeholder conflicts to the appropriate accountable executive or committee.
Key Stakeholders:
- Internal: CIO and investment leadership; portfolio managers; Investment Risk; Compliance; Legal; Operations; Technology; Product; Client Group; Finance; Internal Audit; local business units.
- External: Brokers; trading venues; liquidity providers; custodians; vendors; consultants; clients; auditors; regulators and industry bodies, as appropriate.
Regulatory, Risk and Governance Expectations:
- The role holder is expected to observe the Company’s values and standards of conduct, including honesty and integrity, confidentiality, due care and diligence, fair dealing, management of conflicts of interest, personal investment dealing, anti-bribery and corruption requirements, competency and continuous professional development, and all applicable laws and regulations.
- Where designated as Material Risk Personnel or otherwise subject to an individual accountability or conduct regime, the role holder must take clear responsibility for the risks, controls and conduct matters within the role’s remit; exercise sound judgement; take reasonable steps to prevent regulatory breaches or client harm; maintain appropriate records; and escalate material concerns promptly. The final regulatory designation, registration and prescribed responsibilities should be confirmed by Compliance and Legal for the appointed individual and the prevailing operating model.
-------------------------
REQUIRED EXPERIENCE AND QUALIFICATIONS
Essential:
- Substantial institutional dealing or trading experience within asset management, including meaningful leadership accountability in a multi-asset or complex investment environment.
- Demonstrated expertise in execution strategy, market microstructure, liquidity, transaction-cost analysis, broker governance and best execution.
- Strong understanding of investment workflows, order lifecycle, post-trade processes, trading technology and operational risk.
- Experience operating in a regulated environment and engaging credibly with Compliance, Risk, Audit, clients and senior investment stakeholders.
- Proven people leadership, including building capability, setting standards, managing through change and developing succession.
- Relevant degree or equivalent professional experience. Professional qualifications such as CFA, FRM or recognised market/trading qualifications are advantageous.
Desirable:
- Experience leading or transforming a centralised or regional dealing model across multiple jurisdictions.
- Exposure to electronic trading, algorithmic execution, fixed-income trading protocols, derivatives, FX, ETFs and less-liquid instruments.
- Experience implementing or enhancing order/execution management systems, data platforms, automation or advanced execution analytics.
- Familiarity with Singapore and major global market-conduct, licensing and individual-accountability expectations relevant to institutional dealing.
- Direct experience supporting ETF launches or an established ETF platform, including interaction with authorised participants, market makers, exchanges and the operational creation/redemption ecosystem.
Leadership Capabilities:
- Client and fiduciary mindset: consistently places client outcomes, fairness and market integrity at the centre of decisions.
- Commercial and investment judgement: integrates market intelligence, portfolio intent, liquidity, cost and risk to reach balanced decisions.
- Control ownership: understands end-to-end risk, asks difficult questions and follows issues through to sustainable closure.
- Influence and partnership: communicates with authority across investment, control and corporate functions without compromising independence of judgement.
- Data-led improvement: uses evidence to challenge established practices, improve execution and prioritise technology investment.
- Calm leadership: makes timely decisions under pressure and creates clarity during volatile markets, incidents or competing priorities.
- Talent leadership: sets high standards while building trust, inclusion, accountability and a durable leadership pipeline.
Eastspring is an equal opportunity employer. We provide equality of opportunity of benefits for all who apply and who perform work for our organisation irrespective of sex, race, age, ethnic origin, educational, social and cultural background, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, disability or part-time / fixed-term work, or any other status protected by applicable law. We encourage the same standards from our recruitment and third-party suppliers taking into account the context of grade, job and location. We also allow for reasonable adjustments to support people with individual physical or mental health requirements.
