Research Consultant (Real Assets)

Location - London with hybrid working as per departmental requirements (currently a MINIMUM of 60%)

LCP is an award-winning actuarial and analytics consultancy providing market-leading capabilities and advice across pensions and financial services, energy, health, and analytics.

We have an exciting opportunity to join our Investment Consulting department as a Research Consultant (Real Assets). LCP’s Investment Consulting practice is widely recognised for delivering rigorous, independent advice. We partner with a broad range of clients from pension schemes and central banks to charities and insurers helping them achieve their investment goals. At the heart of what we do is in-depth fund-manager research and analysis, giving clients the insight they need to select the right managers and maximise long-term returns.

What will you be doing?

As a Research Consultant, you’ll drive research into real-asset strategies and their managers, your key responsibilities will be to:

• Research Real Assets investment products offered by investment managers
• Provide clear, well justified recommendations on the suitability of fund management products for use by our clients
• Identify emerging trends and market opportunities in the real estate and infrastructure sectors, and assess their potential impact on client portfolios and investment strategies
• Collaborate closely with client-facing teams, analysts, and other stakeholders to ensure alignment of research efforts with overall client aims
• Maintain strong relationships with industry experts, peers, and other external sources to gather valuable market intelligence and stay ahead of industry trends
• Produce high-quality research reports, whitepapers, and other thought leadership materials to enhance the firm's market presence and credibility
• Research approaches and providers of services (eg brokers, platforms) to sell funds on the secondary market. Research other ways for investors to raise liquidity from their illiquid assets
• Conduct investment manager research and formulate views on investment managers’ capabilities across asset classes to which you’re assigned
• Attend regular in-person research meetings and internal discussions
• Identify funds and managers that require researching
• Lead or contribute to research meetings with managers through the planning of meetings, interviewing, analysis and proposing recommendations
• Produce high quality written and presentational materials to communicate our views to client-facing consultants and clients
• Support clients on the appropriate design of Real Assets strategies that meet their own investment objectives
• Conduct operational due diligence reviews on fund management companies in-line with LCP’s processes
• Conduct reviews of fund documentation
• Ensure the recommendations on managers’ products can be justified: data and decisions are well documented; arguments and views are logical and consistent
• Review work done by others, including both detailed checks and a check for overall reasonableness

Skills and Experience:

• Several years of Real Assets experience in a manager research or asset management role at an investment consultancy, wealth manager, family office, fund-of-funds or in-house asset-owner
• Experience and knowledge of Real Assets and investment strategies
• Experience in assessing environmental and social impacts of real estate and infrastructure investments; and experience of metrics and techniques used
• Excellent presentation and communication skills including and ability to present persuasively and debate your views
• Time management and delegation ability, to juggle variable, sometimes high workloads
• Good Excel, data-processing and project management skills
• Professional qualification in investment, finance or surveying (preferrable)

What’s in it for you?

Take a look at our and Career stories pages to see why our people love being here! As well as joining a certified B-Corp, multi-award winning, fun, collaborative, people first organisation where your personal and professional skills will be developed to make you the best you can be, we offer an attractive benefits package designed to promote your overall wellbeing so that you are able to perform to your full potential both in and out of work. Currently our core benefits package includes:

For you:

• Hybrid working (see top of the advert for details)
• Professional study support (where applicable)
• Access to our internal Wellbeing, LGBTQ+, Multicultural and Women’s networks

For your family:

• Life assurance
• Income protection
• Enhanced maternity/paternity/adoption and shared parental leave

For your health:

• 26 days annual leave (pro-rata for part-time working) plus bank holidays (most of which can be taken flexibly!) with options to buy & sell holiday
• Private medical insurance
• Discounted gym memberships, critical illness and dental insurance through our flexible benefits
• Eye care vouchers
• Cycle to work scheme
• Digital GP services

For your wealth:

• Competitive pension scheme
• Discretionary bonus scheme
• High street discounts
• Season ticket loans

For others:

• Volunteering opportunities

For the environment:

• Electric vehicle salary sacrifice scheme (qualifying period applies)

And much more!

We continuously strive to build an inclusive workplace where all forms of diversity are valued, including age, background, disability, gender, gender identity, gender expression, race, religion or sexual orientation.

LCP is committed to making our opportunities accessible to all and would welcome you getting in touch to let us know if an adjustment can be made to help with your application. This may be extra time for assessments, pre-interview site visits, interview structure or questions, or asking us about building accessibility. Whatever it may be, please get in touch via our dedicated email address - to discuss how we can support you with your application.

Recruitment agencies

LCP operates a Preferred Supplier List (PSL) for recruitment agencies which is reviewed annually. We do not accept unsolicited CVs or candidate profiles from agencies who are not part of our current PSL. LCP only pay agency fees where we have a signed agreement in place, and the agency has been instructed by a member of our recruitment team to supply CVs via the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) for a legitimate, open vacancy. If this process is not adhered to, LCP reserve the right to contact these candidates directly and have discussions with them without paying any agency fees. We do not pay agency fees when speculative and unsolicited CVs or candidate profiles are submitted to any employee or Partner at LCP.