ROLE OVERVIEW
Ascenteum is seeking a senior consultant to serve as the programme lead accountable for end-to-end delivery of a major investment data transformation spanning Investment Accounting, Investment Operations, and Investment Analytics. This includes the successful implementation of IBOR and ABOR capabilities as a single source of truth for investment decision-making and financial reporting.
The portfolio encompasses data and technology modernisation efforts (including a Palantir Foundry-based enterprise data programme), process redesign, coordination with People & Culture on organisational and workforce impacts, and the resolution of legacy data and operational issues.
Today, these workstreams are largely siloed - owned by different teams with limited coordination. The mandate from the CFO and CIO is clear: create a cohesive, integrated plan that connects the dots across all investment-related work, with disciplined tracking and biweekly reporting.
This role requires a seasoned professional who combines deep domain credibility in investment operations and accounting with proven transformation leadership. The successful candidate will need to earn trust quickly with experienced, technically skilled stakeholders who value autonomy, and demonstrate that a coordinated approach accelerates rather than constrains their work.
SCOPE OF ENGAGEMENT
This is a programme leadership role. The consultant is responsible for building and maintaining the integrated plan, ensuring coordination across workstreams, tracking progress, and escalating risks and resource gaps. Execution of business-specific deliverables remains the responsibility of the respective business functions. Where resource gaps exist, this role will surface and escalate them - not absorb the work.
Programme Integration & Planning
• Conduct a comprehensive inventory and assessment of all in-flight and planned investment-related initiatives across Investment Accounting, Investment Operations, and Analytics.
• Identify gaps, overlaps, dependencies, and sequencing risks across the portfolio.
• Develop and maintain a single integrated programme plan with clear milestones, ownership, and interdependencies.
• Establish biweekly reporting cadence with consolidated status, risk, and decision-tracking for CFO and CIO visibility.
• Proactively surface transformation opportunities that have not yet been recognised or scoped.
Enterprise Data Programme Coordination
• Work closely with Programme Managers, data platform leadership, and business stakeholders to align Foundry-based initiatives with the broader investment transformation roadmap.
• Ensure data platform deliverables are connected to upstream and downstream dependencies in investment workflows.
Legacy Issue Resolution Coordination
• Partner with Finance teams working to identify and resolve historical data quality, reconciliation, and operational issues.
• Understand the nature and status of these issues, how they are being mitigated, and their implications for broader transformation efforts.
• Ensure legacy issue resolution is tracked and integrated into the overall programme plan, not treated as a standalone activity.
People & Process Transformation
• Coordinate with People & Culture on workforce-related initiatives such as organisational design, capability building, and role clarity, ensuring alignment with process and technology changes.
• Partner with Change Enablement to ensure stakeholders are engaged, informed, and supported through transitions.
• Surface process improvement opportunities and ensure the right business owners are assigned to design and implement changes that reduce manual effort, improve controls, and enable scalability.
Stakeholder Engagement & Governance
• Build trusted relationships with senior stakeholders across Investment Accounting, Operations, and Analytics.
• Facilitate cross-functional alignment sessions, working groups, and steering-level discussions.
• Establish lightweight, practical governance structures that create transparency and accountability without impeding execution.
• Operate as a trusted advisor and coordination lead, surfacing recommendations and escalating decisions to internal leadership as appropriate.
• Facilitate cross-functional decision-making across CFO and CIO organisations, including surfacing trade-offs between data accuracy, timeliness, and operational complexity for leadership resolution.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
Mandatory
• 15+ years of experience in financial services, with significant depth in investment accounting, middle office operations, or investment operations.
• Demonstrated track record leading large-scale, multi-workstream transformation programmes in complex, matrixed organisations.
• Strong understanding of investment lifecycle processes, including front-to-back workflows, IBOR/ABOR constructs, reconciliation, and reporting.
• Proven ability to lead through influence in environments with limited formal authority - earning trust with senior, domain-expert stakeholders.
• Experience standing up programme governance and integrated reporting frameworks in environments that previously lacked them.
• Exceptional communication skills: able to translate between business, technology, and executive audiences.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity - this role requires someone who can define the roadmap, not just execute against one.
• Proven accountability for delivery outcomes - not just coordination, but ownership of results and follow-through to implementation.
• Natural problem solver with a proven ability to workshop issues, facilitate solution design, and hold teams accountable for follow-through.
• Ability to articulate a compelling vision, map out a multi-year programme, and lay out a practical set of actions to gain traction and sustain momentum.