Summary
Overview
Work history
Education
Skills
leadership
community stewardship
Certification
Awards
Timeline
Generic
MONIKA Calay

MONIKA Calay

London

Summary

Expert Portfolio Consultant focused on developing Vanguard Portfolio Services strategy to increase scale, drive asset flows and build new business opportunities. Conducts analysis and research to support client needs. Communicates solutions and provides investment expertise to Vanguard's institutional and intermediary retail clients.

Overview

13
13
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification

Work history

Portfolio Consultant

Vanguard, Vanguard Portfolio Services (VPS)
London
10.2019 - Current
  • Acts as an investment expert both internally and externally. Provides investment expertise to relationship management and sales teams; is regularly called upon to participate in client meetings. Year to date, helped generate approximately £100Mn in net new assets in the LifeStrategy range
  • Leads the execution of large scale analysis in Python to derive statistical inferences from 200+ advisor portfolios. Analysis will provide valuable client insights to fuel data-driven decision making
  • Developed the portfolio consulting team's menu of services. Defined business opportunity, type of service to be offered, nature of deliverables, charging structure and client target segments. Forecasted expected demand for each service by building strategic relationships with key stakeholders on the European distribution team
  • Spearheaded the 2020 portfolio consulting strategy for the Small GP segment (UK advisors with under £50Mn in AUM). Mediated between competing stakeholder demands
  • Developed and automated portfolio consulting client multi-asset research reports in Python using Morningstar's Excel API, resulting in a time saving of approximately 150-200 hours annually
  • Led sales training sessions to improve the European distribution team's investment acumen and product knowledge

Senior ETF Analyst

Vanguard, International ETF Research Centre
London
08.2018 - 10.2019
  • Authored and co-authored white papers including, Futures and ETFs, Benchmark Comparison and Synthetic Structures, in order to increase Vanguard's product adoption rates globally
  • Helped to create the methodology behind a scalable ETFs and futures comparison tool developed in Python. Tool helps ETF capital markets team guide institutional clients on which delta one products to hold for lowest cost index exposure
  • Carried out extensive fixed income research to address liquidity concerns raised by clients and regulators. Aggregated, cleaned, and sorted approximately 10 million bond liquidity metrics from FactSet using Python
  • Conducted research on sustainable investing trends. Presented findings at the Sustainable Finance for Investing Conference hosted by Dauphine University in Paris. Additionally, authored an article on ESG ETFs for the November 2019 OECD Observer Magazine
  • Created confidential Quarterly Business Review reports for Senior Leadership use only, summarising international ETF business results across all regions, including asset growth, revenue rate and cash flows

Passive Strategies Analyst

Morningstar
London, UK
09.2015 - 08.2018
  • Conducted qualitative and quantitative research. Analysed and rated 47 passive and active funds. Mastered Morningstar's research process and rating methodology
  • Contributed to and produced analytical thought leadership papers extensively read within, and outside the firm. These include: A Framework for Analysing Multifactor Funds, A Guided Tour of the European ETF Marketplace, China Doesn't Make Grade on ESG, Under the Hood: Beyond Emerging-Markets Yields and Go Active in Russia
  • Helped Morningstar's portfolio managers with their asset allocation and fund selection decisions in the emerging-markets and US equity fund space
  • Presented research findings by speaking on webinars, panels, Morningstar TV and to large public bodies, including adviser forums around the UK
  • Contributed quotes and articles to the Financial Times, Money Observer and Portfolio Adviser
  • Participated in due diligence meetings with asset management firms' executive leadership teams

Product Specialist

Bloomberg
London, UK
11.2012 - 08.2015
  • Initiated and led the development of Bloomberg's unique FAQ machine learning tool
  • Helped create a Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithm on all incoming Bloomberg help desk chats
  • Upon leaving the team, the tool was able to successfully answer approximately 25% of all client queries on over 30,000 Bloomberg functions

Education

Master of Science - Data Science

University College London
London
09.2020

Bachelor of Arts - Economics, with a minor in Mathematics

California State University, Northridge
Los Angeles

Skills

  • Serves as department expert on portfolio construction
  • Drives content strategy and creation
  • Presents research findings at client specific events to increase Vanguard's brand awareness in Europe
  • Develops portfolio consulting services strategy with executive leadership team
  • Leads idea generation and execution of large scale and complex data science projects
  • Identifies and cultivates positive stakeholder relationships to ensure buy-in
  • Maintains an expert-level understanding of capital markets, asset management and the financial services industry
  • Proficient in R (R Markdown, caret, tidyverse, dplyr, ggplot) and Python (Pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn, TensorFlow)

leadership

  • Serving on Vanguard's Strong Start for Kids (SSfK) Europe leadership team. SSfK is Vanguard's philanthropic initiative focusing on kindergarten readiness
  • Established a framework and process to effectively select, monitor and evaluate 2-3 charitable partners for Vanguard's European business for the next 3-5 years
  • Created a methodology to screen potential charity partners, in conjunction with consulting firm New Philanthropy Capital (NPC). Relevant factors included: charity's focus, alignment with Vanguard's culture, geographic location, operating model, risk, impact, financial position and ability to provide volunteering opportunities
  • Achieved operational readiness to collect ad-hoc payments, including employee donations, windfall payments and corporate donations
  • Created Strong Start for Kids reporting papers for Vanguard's Board of Directors
  • Responsible for developing management training for chosen charity partner ICAN. Adopted a New Ways of Working (NWOW) approach. Training focuses on effective coaching (challenging, recognising and discussing performance), removing obstacles to success and creating psychologically safe environments

community stewardship

  • Serving on Vanguard's leadership team for BAME, an employee group committed to increasing diverse talent representation and fostering an inclusive culture within Vanguard Europe
  • Responsible for awareness pillar. Organised employee educational sessions on racism, including case studies, panel events, fire side chats, book clubs and ally trainings
  • Created a strategy for measuring progress on diversity and inclusion, including voluntary collection of employee data
  • Helping to onboard four Investment 20/20 trainees. The scheme provides an in-depth 12 month training in investment management for school and college leavers and recent graduates

Certification

  • Passed CFA Level I and II
  • DataCamp certificates: Introduction to Data Science in Python, Linear Classifiers in Python, Intermediate Python, Supervised Learning with scikit-learn, pandas foundations, Multiple and Logistic Regression in R, Credit Risk Modelling in R

Awards

  • Vanguard's Leading with Care Recognition Award (2019)
  • WeAreTheCity Rising Stars in Investment Management (Shortlist 2019)
  • Women in Investment Awards Fund Analyst of the Year (Shortlist 2018)

Timeline

Portfolio Consultant

Vanguard, Vanguard Portfolio Services (VPS)
10.2019 - Current

Senior ETF Analyst

Vanguard, International ETF Research Centre
08.2018 - 10.2019

Passive Strategies Analyst

Morningstar
09.2015 - 08.2018

Product Specialist

Bloomberg
11.2012 - 08.2015

Master of Science - Data Science

University College London

Bachelor of Arts - Economics, with a minor in Mathematics

California State University, Northridge

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MONIKA Calay