To give you an idea of where I’m at, I currently work as an Investment Accountant at a large insurer in the US and passed CFA level 1 this past June. My job consists of reconciliations and STAT reporting (insurance regulations). I’ve been in this role for about a year and just recently received a promotion. Prior to this, I worked in Pricing and Derivative Valuations at a large custodial bank for two years. I mainly dealt with security master set-ups and worked with pricing vendors to insure accruate pricing and daily NAVs.
I recently interviewed at a small hedge fund that is continuing to grow (in AUMs) and already has a great reputation on the street. The official title of the position is “Analyst”, but will initially consist of reconciliations. Although this is a slight turn off as I feel I might be “over-qualified”, the employees I met with suggested that this role would evolve and become more of a “hybrid role” with time.
In my initial thoughts, I feel this opportunity will put me closer to the investment management process as well as working with some of the brightest minds in the business.
I would like to hear everyone’s thoughts and opinions on the best course of action.
I would 100% take this offer. A small firm can give you the opportunity to take on more work including possibly more investment research work over time when they trust you. You would be an idiot to not take this no offense, this position is literally the dream everyone in the BO is looking for and you stumbled upon it.
going to a FO role without the proper route is near impossible. As 1000s of posts on this site suggest it is either top mba or BO for life. Makes you wonder if 99% of the people in this forum are indeed all big shots doing FO work moving the market with each key stroke.
Anyways, I have seen couple people move from ops to front office at small-med sized hedge funds. Not from fund accountant but from ops (some reason they separate these two out). Ops usually sit in the trading floor with the investment team and the rest depends on what you do and how you do it.