WHAT DOES AN INVESTMENT RISK ANALYST DO?
Published: Nov 20, 2025 - The Investment Risk Analyst produces consistent risk and performance reports, enhances existing reporting tools, develops new analytical solutions using databases such as MySQL, and performs data validation, security modeling, and exception processing to ensure accuracy. This role involves supporting risk managers by building applications, conducting quantitative analyses on large datasets, preparing portfolio insights using systems like Bloomberg PORT, and resolving data issues of low to moderate complexity. The Analyst also partners with internal groups to obtain high-quality data, provides investment risk consulting to stakeholders across the organization, and supports risk consultants in other locations.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Investment Risk Analyst
1. Investment Risk Analyst Overview
- Risk Analysis: Work directly with the portfolio managers to help them get an understanding of the specific risk drivers in their portfolios.
- Quantitative Support: Provide quantitative and analytical support to help improve the risk-aware portfolio construction process.
- Python Development: Develop risk metrics in Python specifically designed for portfolio managers.
- Risk Assessment: Analyze portfolio risk exposures using quantitative tools in Python and share results with the PMs.
- Tool Research: Research to develop new tools to manage risk.
- Risk Analytics: Develop and implement enhanced risk analytics across the firm's diverse investment strategies.
- Strategy Understanding: Understand all trading strategies, P&L developments, positions, risk limits, etc.
- Leadership Reporting: Present key findings to senior leadership and the investment team.
2. Investment Risk Analyst Job Description
- Risk Engagement: Engage with senior risk managers and the investment teams to understand their investment processes and the underlying investment risks.
- Risk Reporting: Review risk reports, communicate findings, raise observations to senior risk managers and business leaders, and research targeted risk issues as advised.
- Risk Investigation: Research and investigate ad-hoc risk issues, interacting with the investment team.
- Portfolio Analysis: Assist senior team members in analyzing portfolio holdings and risk measures.
- Risk Management: Measure, monitor, and manage investment risk.
- Risk Communication: Assist in the communication of risk analysis to fund managers.
- Data Processing: Run processes for gathering fund risk data and generating risk reports for portfolios.
- Reporting Solutions: Maintain and improve risk data reporting solutions and create visualizations/reports to help run the investment risk process.
- Data Integrity: Maintain the integrity and accuracy of the data in the system and work with Technology and Operations to resolve system and portfolio data issues.
3. Investment Risk Analyst Functions
- Risk Frameworks: Lead or support project-style initiatives that strengthen global investment risk frameworks across areas such as liquidity and counterparty risk.
- Process Review: Review existing tools and processes regularly to identify opportunities for enhancement.
- Process Improvement: Collaborate with team members and corporate groups to implement process improvements effectively.
- Risk Summaries: Prepare clear summaries for senior management that highlight portfolio risk positions.
- Risk Evaluation: Evaluate the effectiveness and completeness of risk oversight procedures in all assigned areas.
- Risk Reporting: Deliver comprehensive reports to local risk committees, boards, and regulatory bodies.
- Standards Compliance: Ensure that all reporting meets organizational standards and regulatory expectations consistently.
- Regulatory Support: Provide support for regulatory reviews, trustee meetings, and client visits.
- Inquiry Management: Assist in addressing additional external inquiries related to investment risk functions.
- Risk Monitoring: Actively monitor emerging investment risk developments across global markets.
- Issue Communication: Communicate new or evolving risk issues promptly to relevant stakeholders.
- Information Sharing: Contribute to maintaining a robust and forward-looking investment risk environment through proactive information sharing.
4. Investment Risk Analyst Accountabilities
- Risk Liaison: Be a key point of contact for all investment risk-related queries across the firm.
- Risk Reporting: Produce daily risk reports and investigate out-of-tolerance metrics.
- Risk Modeling: Use third-party risk models as well as internally developed tools to provide risk insight.
- Tool Development: Develop tools to conduct analysis or implement efficient data management.
- Report Prototyping: Manually build reports or prototypes (e.g., using coding or spreadsheets) to provide proof of concept before tools are implemented.
- Stakeholder Communication: Liaise with Portfolio Managers and Analysts to refine analyses and communicate key findings.
- Product Development: Contribute to product development initiatives as a Risk representative.
- Portfolio Challenge: Analyse and challenge portfolio construction.
- Stress Testing: Perform stress-testing activities.
- ESG Integration: Assist with ESG risks in the risk framework.
- Methodology Communication: Communicate methodologies and results within the Risk team, prepare materials, and deliver presentations.
5. Investment Risk Analyst Job Summary
- Competitive Benefits: Access valuable benefits, including a market-competitive remuneration package.
- Inclusive Culture: Join an ambitious team that fosters an innovative and inclusive culture.
- Skill Development: Develop capabilities through ongoing learning opportunities.
- Career Growth: Grow a career within a supportive and forward-thinking environment.
- Industry Contribution: Contribute to one of the largest and fastest-growing superannuation funds.
- Professional Exposure: Gain exposure to broad initiatives that encourage long-term professional advancement.
- Organisational Stability: Benefit from organisational stability and strong strategic direction.
- Meaningful Work: Engage in meaningful work that supports improved outcomes for members.
- Future Building: Build a future within an industry leader committed to excellence.
6. Investment Risk Analyst Responsibilities
- Risk Analysis: Analyse funds to understand the key risks, and communicate findings with senior risk managers and fund managers.
- Risk Compliance: Ensure that all supported funds and mandates adhere to internal investment risk guidelines while raising appropriate levels of challenge.
- Insightful Reporting: Conduct insightful analysis and summarise findings for escalation to risk committees and senior leaders.
- Real Estate Oversight: Assist with the development and integration of risk oversight and reporting for all Real Estate businesses.
- Reporting Development: Contribute to the development of internal reporting systems.
- Cross-Functional Relations: Develop key relationships with other departments.
- Process Improvement: Recommend and establish improvements to the team’s processes.
- Asset Oversight: Provide support and input into the oversight of other Real Asset products, such as Infrastructure and Private Equity.
7. Investment Risk Analyst Details
- Team Relationships: Build and maintain relationships with the investment team.
- Reporting Requirements: Identify, build, and implement reporting requirements supporting the investment group.
- Advanced Analysis: Perform sophisticated ad hoc analyses, such as stress tests, sensitivity analysis, or hedging analysis under various market conditions.
- Risk Management Support: Act as backup to the Senior Investment Risk Manager for critical deliverables specific to the investment group.
- Data Management: Maintain and manage data required for the investment group’s reporting requirements.
- Ad-Hoc Response: Respond to ad-hoc requests for portfolio characteristics and risk statistics information.
- Marketing Support: Assist with the creation of marketing materials and pitch books based on client-tailored optimization analysis to support the sales force.
- Trend Awareness: Remain current on performance-related trends, topics, and issues.
- Industry Analysis: Assist in conducting industry-wide studies and data analysis.
8. Investment Risk Analyst Duties
- Due Diligence: Assess delegated portfolio managers’ investment risk procedures as part of ongoing due diligence.
- Risk Frameworks: Maintain and improve the robust framework of risk and performance oversight.
- Risk Appropriateness: Analyse the appropriateness of risks undertaken in view of a fund’s investment objective, strategy, and target market.
- Breach Resolution: Discuss and resolve investment risk breaches with portfolio managers.
- Risk Reporting: Analyse and present risk and performance analyses, including risk attribution.
- Risk Methodology: Enhance the methodology and approach to risk management, including VaR, counterparty, liquidity, market, and performance risk measures.
- Fund Review: Review new fund portfolios to assess whether they are within the risk appetite and ensure the portfolio is stress tested for FCA reporting.
- Documentation Review: Confirm all investment risks are incorporated within the product documentation and verify appropriate post-launch monitoring processes.
- Fair Value Assessment: Support the review of assets subject to fair value pricing and assess adverse market movements.
9. Investment Risk Analyst Details and Accountabilities
- Market Risk Analysis: Provide in-depth daily market risk analysis for all funds within scope.
- Mandate Alignment: Ensure each fund remains aligned with its mandate and the agreed risk profile defined in its prospectus or contractual documents.
- Model Development: Contribute to the development and enhancement of quantitative models used for liquidity risk monitoring and stress testing.
- Report Validation: Validate the integrity of risk reports by checking data sources, mappings, analyses, and end-to-end data flows.
- Regulatory Reporting: Perform timely, consistent, and accurate reporting in line with UCITS, AIFMD, and other applicable regulatory requirements.
- Committee Reporting: Produce reports that comply with internal policies and the terms of reference established by relevant Committees.
- Fund Integration: Support the integration of Schroder-managed or distributed funds into the core risk architecture.
- Fund Onboarding: Facilitate the onboarding of new funds into risk systems and databases.
- Risk Output Review: Review risk outputs to ensure reliability and relevance for decision-making.
- Anomaly Detection: Identify potential anomalies or data issues that may affect the accuracy of risk assessments.
- Process Enhancement: Strengthen monitoring processes through continuous refinement of tools and methodologies.
- Risk Oversight: Enhance overall risk oversight by contributing to effective systems, reporting frameworks, and analytical capabilities.
10. Investment Risk Analyst Tasks
- Strategic Implementation: Support implementation of strategic roadmap initiatives, including tech identification, reporting enhancements, and data integrations.
- Quantitative Analysis: Conduct quantitative analysis to identify key investment risks.
- Risk Reporting: Produce regular and ad-hoc reporting on firmwide assets.
- Data Analysis: Analyze and process large data sets to identify trends and significant changes in investment risks.
- Risk Governance: Support investment risk identification, practices, and governance.
- Market Assessment: Understand current market conditions and assess assets for changes in investment risks.
- Presentation Preparation: Prepare materials and presentations for firm leadership and the Investment Risk team.
- Automation Development: Develop automated and scalable solutions to assess risk.
- Risk Initiatives: Participate in, lead, and innovate team initiatives to identify and monitor investment risks.
- Team Collaboration: Collaborate with other members of the team and the broader firm to execute investment risk initiatives.
11. Investment Risk Analyst Roles
- System Development: Develop and maintain key investment risk analysis systems and risk reporting platforms.
- Process Improvement: Identify improvement opportunities within the risk reporting function to enhance efficiency and accuracy.
- Project Management: Drive identified improvements through to completion by managing projects end-to-end.
- Project Coordination: Coordinate project activities to ensure successful execution and timely delivery.
- Portfolio Analysis: Conduct portfolio risk analysis to extract meaningful insights for decision-makers.
- Market Risk Analysis: Analyze market risk data to highlight trends, sensitivities, and potential vulnerabilities.
- Decision Support: Provide actionable information to portfolio teams to support effective risk-aware investment decisions.
- Team Collaboration: Work closely with team members to deliver comprehensive investment risk management information.
- Committee Preparation: Prepare materials for committees, forums, and regulatory reporting cycles.
- Quantitative Solutions: Create enhanced quantitative risk solutions to strengthen oversight and analytical capability.
- Tool Development: Develop tools that support both the risk function and investment teams with robust data and modelling.
12. Investment Risk Analyst Additional Details
- Risk Review: Review daily and monthly fund risk measures and escalate issues to senior management.
- Risk Monitoring: Monitor fund risk exposure across market risk, credit risk, liquidity risk, and OTC counterparty risk using established risk systems.
- Data Validation: Validate data feeds to ensure system inputs remain reliable and consistent.
- Report Accuracy: Confirm the accuracy of all risk output reports generated by the system.
- Regulatory Tracking: Track regulatory developments relevant to investment risk and assess their implications.
- Regulatory Implementation: Take an active role in implementing initiatives required by new or updated regulations.
- Control Evaluation: Evaluate the effectiveness of risk controls in light of regulatory expectations.
- Anomaly Investigation: Identify anomalies or unexpected movements in fund risk metrics and investigate underlying causes.
- Process Improvement: Support continuous improvement of risk monitoring processes through regular review.
- Client Reporting: Compile monthly and quarterly client reporting materials for internal review.
13. Investment Risk Analyst Essential Functions
- Risk Presentation: Prepare analysis and insights to present on portfolio risk for quarterly investment reviews across allocated investment strategies.
- Bespoke Analytics: Develop bespoke analytics and perform deep dives into key portfolio risk topics.
- Action Coordination: Coordinate with senior investment leaders on agreed follow-up actions after each review.
- Liquidity Reporting: Collaborate with the Portfolio Risk team to produce and deliver the quarterly Liquidity Risk Report to governance forums.
- Liquidity Oversight: Provide daily oversight of the Liquidity Risk Framework using internal systems.
- Liquidity Monitoring: Monitor liquidity classifications, alerts, and escalation procedures to ensure compliance with risk standards.
- Committee Reporting: Support the preparation and delivery of monthly liquidity committee reports.
- Board Reporting: Assist in completing quarterly board reports that include portfolio and liquidity risk information.
- Dashboard Development: Contribute to the design and enhancement of dashboards, data visualisations, and analytical tools using business intelligence platforms.
- Inbox Management: Help manage the central Risk Team Inbox and coordinate responses to queries from across the firm.
- Vendor Liaison: Liaise with external providers of portfolio risk analytics without referencing specific organisations.
- Executive Summaries: Assist in drafting monthly executive summaries focused on fund performance and portfolio risk for internal committees.
- Report Consolidation: Coordinate with colleagues to gather, review, and consolidate risk reports for quarterly portfolio review processes.
14. Investment Risk Analyst Role Purpose
- Risk Reporting: Prepare daily risk management reports regarding market risk, such as interest rate risk and foreign exchange risk, liquidity risk, and inter-bank settlement risk.
- Risk Analysis: Analyze and report conditions of market risk and liquidity risk, as well as the performance of market operations.
- Limit Monitoring: Monitor the usage of risk and loss limits to ensure they are not exceeded.
- Limit Escalation: Report the excess of the limits to appropriate persons or departments.
- Market Risk Reporting: Prepare daily and non-daily risk management reports regarding market risk, including interest rate risk, foreign exchange risk, and liquidity risk.
- System Operation: Operate risk management systems, capture market data, and input it into systems.
- Regulatory Reporting: Prepare timely and accurate monthly and quarterly reports, plus certain compliance monitoring reports.
- Manual Drafting: Draft updates or revisions to the department’s Procedure Manual.
- Procedure Detailing: Detail appropriate procedures for risk analysis and reporting in the Procedure Manual.
- Document Preservation: Maintain procedures for the preservation of documents in the Procedure Manual.
- Audit Preparation: Prepare necessary documentation for the examination and audit process.
- Audit Interface: Interface with examiners and auditors and handle examination or audit responsibilities as directed by the Head of the Department.
- Staff Training: Provide training to department staff and file reports and documents.
15. Investment Risk Analyst General Responsibilities
- Risk Reporting: Complete monthly and quarterly investment risk reporting on holdings, portfolio risk metrics such as duration, convexity, and credit quality, and risk measures, including stress testing and scenario analysis.
- Data Analysis: Gather and analyze data needed to support investment risk processes across economic indicators, market information, and internal holdings.
- Data Validation: Perform data validation and reconciliation tasks to ensure accuracy in portfolio risk analytics.
- Quantitative Methods: Apply quantitative methods to measure risk, including value at risk, optimization, Monte Carlo simulation, principal components analysis, and regression.
- Asset Allocation Support: Support strategic asset allocation work through analytical input and modelling support.
- Liquidity Analysis: Conduct liquidity analysis to assess the ability of portfolios to meet obligations under varying conditions.
- Risk Simulation: Run risk simulations and stress tests to evaluate portfolio behavior under adverse scenarios.
- Cashflow Projections: Produce cashflow projections that contribute to forward-looking risk assessments.
- Performance Attribution: Assist with performance attribution to understand key drivers of returns and risks.
- Risk Projects: Contribute to additional risk-related projects to enhance analytical capabilities.
- Findings Communication: Communicate and present analytical findings clearly to internal stakeholders.
- Team Collaboration: Collaborate with investment management, enterprise risk, data governance, and hedging teams to complete assigned tasks.
16. Investment Risk Analyst Key Accountabilities
- Restriction Monitoring: Monitor funds’ and mandates’ compliance with investment restrictions on thinkFolio.
- Process Enhancement: Look for ways to enhance current processes to ensure all funds and mandates operate within guidelines while reducing time requirements.
- Incident Management: Manage investment guideline incidents and potential breaches directly with portfolio managers and third parties, ensuring appropriate reporting and MI is produced.
- Restriction Coding: Code investment restrictions on new accounts, update existing portfolios with changes, and stay informed about updates to how funds and mandates are managed.
- Monitoring Checks: Conduct various investment monitoring checks on a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis.
- Suitability Checking: Serve as the first line checker of suitability for securities across various product types, including collectives, ISAs, and offshore bonds.
- Risk Oversight Support: Assist the Investment Risk Oversight Manager with the smooth running of the oversight function, including attending portfolio construction meetings and investment risk reviews.
- Tool Development: Aid the team in creating new Investment Risk Tools and Controls, such as an independent pre- and post-trade system.
- Procedure Improvement: Work with members of relevant business areas to improve procedures and raise the current standards of Cost & Charges deliverables.
17. Investment Risk Analyst Roles and Details
- Risk Assessment: Identify, assess, measure, and analyze risk, attribution, and performance across the firm’s Global Equity and Fixed Income portfolios, including cash and derivative investments in US, European, and Emerging Market products.
- Quant Automation: Work with a small quantitative team to help automate market risk reports and apply multi-factor models for portfolio construction, research, and risk management.
- Factor Modeling: Use multi-factor models to identify and measure investment risk across global investment strategies (Axioma, Northfield, Bloomberg PORT, and Barra).
- Risk Presentation: Identify, analyze, and present portfolio risk and attribution analytics to the investment team and external clients.
- P&L Explanation: Understand and explain the drivers of P&L changes and risk exposure.
- Risk Insights: Provide insights into risk exposures, risk concentration, and tail risk using Bloomberg risk applications.
- Performance Analysis: Perform in-depth analysis to better understand portfolio performance based on exposures to risk factors.
- PM Collaboration: Work directly with Portfolio Managers to provide risk analysis that will improve portfolio construction.
- Big Data Analysis: Use big data analytics (Python and R) to better understand sources of risk and returns.
- Dashboard Development: Work with IT to develop real-time risk dashboards for PMs and senior management.
- Risk Monitoring: Monitor, analyze, and communicate daily changes in the risk profile of the firm’s long-only and long-short portfolios.
- Risk Communication: Provide accurate and timely risk information to both internal managers and external clients.
18. Investment Risk Analyst Responsibilities and Key Tasks
- Report Production: Use a mosaic of databases and systems to produce coherent and consistent reports.
- Report Development: Improve existing reports and develop new ones to cover increasing analysis and products.
- Data Coordination: Manage strong relationships with internal groups to obtain timely and high-quality data.
- Risk Support: Assist Risk Managers in supporting various investment groups.
- Data Resolution: Identify and resolve data issues of low to moderate complexity impacting performance, characteristics, attribution, and risk reporting.
- App Development: Build applications that perform specific tasks under the direction of senior risk managers and conduct quantitative analyses involving large data sets.
- Tool Development: Develop tools utilizing an internal MySQL database environment.
- Portfolio Reporting: Prepare, analyze, and deliver portfolio risk and performance reports from various attribution systems to provide portfolio insights (e.g., Bloomberg PORT).
- Data Validation: Perform data validation, exception processing, and security modeling to improve data coverage and ensure accuracy of the reports.
- Risk Consulting: Provide advice and investment risk consulting services to users of these reports across investment management, marketing groups, and clients, including attribution, characteristics analysis, risk analysis, and return-based statistics review.
- Consultant Support: Support risk consultants in other locations.