- Many discretionary investment seats are held by expats from Tokyo who are on 2 to 4 year rotations within the greater Nippon Life corporate structure; many don't have prior expertise, and in some cases any experience at all, in their product
- This rotational structure results in complete focus on operational risks and near zero-tolerance for benchmark deviation (at least in fixed income products); read as "little to no risk-taking"
- English language proficiency of expat coworkers is very mixed
- Advertises itself as an asset manager, pays like a life co
- Will stub no matter what month you start in
- If you are in a research seat, expect your research to largely be used as a validation function by PMs, senior managers, and Tokyo-based investment committees; decisions are made before any analysis is ever done
- In my case and in the case of at least one other colleague I discussed with, my position description was heavily misadvertised during recruiting to sound sexier and with a bigger growth-path (i.e. was brought on to help allocate new $__MM fund to riskier securities; started the job and that allocation had already been made, and with a 30% cap on said riskier securities, with the other 70% being near-riskless securities); you won't find this out until you start the job so ask to read IMAs and see holdings by product/credit rating
- Do not expect to come in here and effect any positive change; very rigid in their ways
- Tight-fisted (pay for your own k-cups)
- Over-promises, woefully under-delivers
