Principal, Trade Support

Connor, Clark & Lunn Financial Group – Principal, Trade Support

Toronto, ON or Vancouver, BC (Hybrid)

We are pleased to be supporting Connor, Clark & Lunn Financial Group (“CC&L Financial Group”) in the search for a Principal, Trade Support. This is a senior leadership role responsible for overseeing the global Trade Support function and owning the trade lifecycle end to end, from order release through allocation, confirmation, affirmation, settlement, and fails management. The role sits within CC&L Financial Group’s Investment Resource Group and supports the investment teams across its multi-boutique family of affiliates, spanning equities, fixed income, foreign exchange, and swap strategies across global markets.

This is a high-impact opportunity for an experienced investment operations leader who combines deep trade lifecycle expertise with a transformation mindset. The successful candidate will lead a globally distributed team while helping to build the next generation operating model for Trade Support, partnering closely with engineers, product owners, portfolio managers, traders, and operations leaders to improve scale, controls, automation, and trade lifecycle transparency.

About Connor, Clark & Lunn Financial Group

Connor, Clark & Lunn Financial Group is Canada’s largest and fastest growing privately owned asset management firm, providing a broad range of traditional and alternative investment products and services through a network of 15 affiliates and subsidiaries. With already more than $240 billion in assets under management, the organization combines the entrepreneurial strengths of its investment affiliates with the scale, operational expertise, and shared resources of a diversified enterprise.

The Trade Support function plays a critical role in supporting this global investment platform. As the firm continues to build for scale, it is investing in enhanced controls, trade completeness monitoring, exception management, and integrated trade lifecycle capabilities spanning settlement, FX funding, financing, and collateral management.

The Opportunity

Reporting into the Director, Investment Resources, the Principal, Trade Support will lead a global team operating across London, Toronto, Vancouver, and Gurugram, India. The role has accountability for the complete trade support process, ensuring trades are accurately captured, matched, confirmed, affirmed, and settled while maintaining strong controls, service levels, and operational resilience.

The successful candidate will oversee current-day operations while helping define the future-state operating model. Working closely with technology and product partners, they will drive initiatives aimed at improving straight-through processing, reducing exceptions and settlement fails, enhancing trade lifecycle visibility, and building scalable capabilities that support the firm’s continued growth.

This role offers significant interaction with portfolio managers, traders, brokers, custodians, and senior stakeholders across the organization. It is well suited to a leader who combines operational excellence, strong risk management instincts, and the ability to lead transformational change within a complex global investment environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the trade lifecycle end to end, including order release in Charles River IMS, trade capture, allocation, confirmation and affirmation through DTCC CTM, settlement instruction via SWIFT, and fails management.
• Lead and develop a global team of managers, specialists, and analysts across multiple locations, establishing clear goals, coaching leaders, and building career development pathways that combine operational expertise with automation and analytical capabilities.
• Operate Trade Support as a unified follow-the-sun function, ensuring standardized handoffs, global process consistency, and clear accountability across all locations.
• Drive same-day allocation and affirmation rates toward a near-100% transaction-level standard while reducing settlement fails and aged breaks through root-cause analysis and sustainable process improvements.
• Define and deliver the roadmap for a T+1 control cockpit, including trade-completeness monitoring, fail-risk ranking, break prioritization, and real-time service telemetry.
• Partner closely with engineers and product owners to identify recurring exception patterns, prioritize operational improvement initiatives, and eliminate repeat issues through technology and process enhancements.
• Oversee equity swap lifecycle administration and FX transaction processing, including independent verification of financing, dividend, and reset cashflows against counterparty statements.
• Act as an operational partner to portfolio managers and traders, identifying and escalating trade and settlement risks proactively throughout the trade lifecycle.
• Manage relationships with executing brokers, prime brokers, custodians, and market utilities, including the development of counterparty scorecards and oversight of agreed service standards.
• Establish and monitor service levels for the function, reporting performance through regular scorecards while overseeing incident management, escalation processes, and post-incident reviews.
• Embed robust operational controls and governance practices, including maker-checker disciplines, control design standards, and change governance in partnership with Operational Risk.
• Collaborate with Treasury, Portfolio Operations, Client Operations, Data, and Technology teams to support the development of an integrated trade lifecycle capability spanning settlement, FX funding, financing, and collateral management.
• Oversee settlement instruction management, commission reporting, and soft-dollar budgeting support for investment teams.
• Provide leadership over the Treasury Services function, including the build of the Treasury pod across cash and liquidity, equity swap collateral and margin, financing and counterparty management, payments and treasury data.

Skills and Qualifications

• Extensive experience in institutional investment operations, including leading managers and teams, ideally within multi-location environments.
• Deep expertise across the trade and settlement lifecycle for equities, foreign exchange, swaps, and fixed income products, with a strong understanding of global market practices and T+1 settlement requirements.
• Hands-on experience with Charles River IMS or comparable order management systems, as well as DTCC CTM/ALERT, SWIFT messaging, and standing settlement instruction management.
• Strong knowledge of equity swap lifecycle events and prime broker operations, complemented by an understanding of treasury processes, margin management, collateral, and multi-currency funding.
• Demonstrated success leading operational transformation initiatives, including automation of exception-driven processes, controlled migrations and cutovers, and measurable improvements in straight-through processing and settlement performance.
• Strong technology and engineering literacy, with experience partnering effectively with engineers and product owners. Familiarity with SQL and/or Python is considered an asset.
• Experience developing ownership and accountability across distributed teams, including offshore production centres.
• Exceptional stakeholder management and communication skills, with the credibility to work closely with traders, portfolio managers, brokers, custodians, and senior business leaders.
• Demonstrated analytical capability, a strong root-cause orientation, and the ability to maintain quality, control, and sound decision-making during critical settlement periods and volume peaks.
• A builder’s mindset, with a focus on creating scalable processes, improving operating efficiency, and applying automation thoughtfully while maintaining appropriate controls.