Hassam El-Shoura

I am a Senior Business Consultant and part of the UK projects team for SimCorp, a global financial software vendor and consultancy firm.

•Participate in all aspects of SimCorp Dimension implementations, including design, configuration, integration and training.
•Analysing and documenting client requirements and mapping them to solutions within SimCorp Dimension
•Carrying out gap analysis
•Involved in Project Managing the deployment of SimCorp’s systems
•Configuring and documenting work flow solutions and presenting to the client for acceptance
•Act as a subject matter expert and business analyst
•Working on change management projects advising clients on process improvement
•Supporting the testing and deployment of SimCorp Dimension
•Conducting and leading analysis workshops at new or existing clients
•Configuring high quality advanced modules of SimCorp Dimension around internal procedures
•Anticipating client needs and identifying short and long-term solutions
•Knowing the requirements for different organizational units and how they work
•Providing supervision and guidance to deliver timely results to client
•Holding workshops to explore customer requirements and work with clients and SimCorp’s team to help capture, define and agree system functional requirements.
•Setting up prototypes to verify requirements.
•Document the proposed design in Analysis and Design documents.
•Perform configuration hand over to the customer and train key users in SimCorp Dimension functionality.
•Communicate errors and enhancement requests to development departments.

I was a Senior Analyst and part of the Investment Committee of ALT-IAM, a start-up asset manager and provider of wealth management solutions.

• Carrying-out the legal and structural build-out of the Fund of Hedge Fund and Single Manager business at ALT-IAM
• Working closely with lawyers, auditors, prime brokers and custodians to develop an operational process
• Project managing the implementation of front to back office trading and risk systems and processes
• Implementation and working knowledge of Paladyne, Sunguard Reech, Murex and AlternativeSoft.
• Implementing procedures for straight through processing and managing and training the operations team to execute day to day requirements.
• Project managing front office requirements by Fund Managers such as investment and portfolio performance attribution, P&L and risk parameters according to risk guidelines
• Working on ongoing projects to improve operational processes and procedures, automating systems to streamline front to back office execution and reporting
• Project managing the on-boarding process for new hedge fund clients, and new hedge fund investments under the ALT-IAM platform
• Ensure that the product development, delivery, sales and maintenance are in accordance with industry standards and within the legal regulatory framework
• Working on ongoing projects to improve and make processes and procedures more efficient and automated.
• Conducting meetings with external portfolio managers and risk managers in order to evaluate the investment proposal and risks attached to the specific asset class/ strategy.
• Provide written meeting documentation and notes on hedge funds research meetings
• Carrying out Operational due diligence and review/ evaluation of the hedge funds administrative procedures and business risks.
• Conducting both quantitative and qualitative analysis on hedge funds
• Involvement in portfolio management, optimization and risk management of the fund
• Coordinating on-site due diligence of hedge fund managers including review and regular reporting.
• Managed client reporting, presentations and new fund launches

• Project managed the change of Iveagh's risk management, operational data and Investment process infrastructure. I was responsible for carrying out cost/benefit analysis, creating flow charts used to explain each process step by step, creating Gantt charts to monitor costs, budgets and timelines, wrote the Business Requirement documentation and worked alongside business and IT to act as the subject matter expert and to make sure IT understand the requirements and processes. I was also involved in the UAT testing phase of the project and trained staff on the applications of the software developed.
• Project managed the merger of the Guinness Family Office with Arundel Partners from an operational perspective with systems and processes integration. Responsible for the current state architecture vs. future state architecture analysis, conducting gap analysis and impact analysis and working closely with the IT team to design, test and implement an integrated, streamlined process. I was also responsible for overseeing the transfer of custody, administrator and prime brokers.
• Exposure to various hedge fund strategies with a focus on equity long/short, fixed income arb/ structured credit, volatility arb, event driven and global macro
• Product focus included corporate and government bonds, credit default swaps, interest rate swaps, equity options, convertible bonds, equity futures, options and swaps, exchange traded derivatives/ exchange traded funds and warrants.
• Managing the full trade flow cycle from front to back office including trade entry, position and cash reconciliations, calculation and confirmation of monthly NAV
• Responsible for the implementation of Iveagh's Portfolio Management System and straight through processing
• Responsible for Iveagh's FX hedging policy from both a share class perspective and underlying Fund perspective with the use of FX forwards, spots and swaps.
• Managing an operations team of three people.
• Implementing a risk management system monitoring the portfolios risk exposures and parameters including VaR analysis, stress testing, correlation testing, number of positions, geographical, sector, liquidity, leverage, margin analysis etc.
• Implementation and working knowledge of Beauchamp, Tradar, Risk Metrics, API and Sophis
• Responsible for post-trade processes, reconciliations, cash management and reporting
• Project managing the merger and integration of Guinness Family Office operations and front office systems, investments and performance calculations with a fund of hedge fund business called Arundel Partners.
• Working on ongoing projects to improve and make processes and procedures more efficient and automated.
• Project managing the integration of a new custodian and administrator requiring the movement of assets both cash and in-specie
• Managing and carrying out Operational due diligence on all funds throughout the investment process. Analysing the operational risks and reporting back to the portfolio manager and investment committee with my findings.
• Producing risk and performance attribution reports on a daily, monthly and quarterly basis.
• Coordinating on-site due diligence of hedge fund managers including review and regular reporting. Writing and updating reports on experience of operational personnel, compliance, internal control and procedures, portfolio pricing and quality of all service providers.
• In-depth research on individual hedge funds including analysis and documentation of approach to strategy, idea generation, investment process, portfolio construction, risk management and trading, as well as cultural and organizational aspects.
• Ongoing hedge fund manager coverage and analysis; frequent generation and dissemination of investment reviews.
• Responsibility for approving managers for investment by the Company's funds as well as removal of managers from the approved list.

I worked as part of the Middle Office team on the Fixed Income desk where I report directly to the Fund Managers of the RAB European High Yield Fund. The Fund is a €450M pan-European fixed income long/short hedge fund and focuses on core European BB+ to CCC rated corporate fixed income securities.

• The products I deal with on a daily basis and have extensive experience of are Credit Default Swaps, Interest Rate Swaps, Bonds, Gilts, Equities, Convertibles, Bank debt and Repo's.
• Built and maintained strong working relationships with third party Administrators, Prime Brokers, Custodians and all other service providers
• Daily trade and position reconciliation to PB's, Fund Administrators & Custodians
• Preparation of daily and monthly fund NAV calculations and reconciliation of same to Fund Administrators.
• Monitor / Calculate currency exposures of non base currency Subscriptions for Forex Hedging requirements
• Prepared and distributed ad-hoc Investor and Management reports.
• Responsible for Cash Management including monitoring & processing PB's Margin requirements
• Daily valuation of Portfolio holdings for the purpose of Performance Monitoring
• Liaise with Prime Brokers, Auditors and Fund Administrators.
• Calculate Management and Performance Fees and reconcile to Fund Administrators. Instruct payment of the same to Fund Manager.
• Maintain Portfolio Management system
• Monitor accrual and instruct Payment of Fund Expenses (Audit Fees etc)
• Record and process Fund Subscriptions and Redemptions
• Maintain record of Shareholder registers and reconcile to Fund Administrators
• Liaise with I.T. Service provider to ensure business integrity of all systems
• Assist in the preparation and maintenance of robust, relevant, operational controls and procedures.
• Involved in creating an offshoot fund called the RAB European Loan Fund: The Fund is a hedged European Bank Loan hedge fund and focuses on core European sub-investment grade loans and high yield securities.
• Coordinate the operational, legal and compliance aspects of the portfolio and am responsible for the development and maintenance of risk and performance monitoring tools used to develop statistical reports to help the investment decision process, the modelling of portfolios for Client Services/Client development departments.