Interim Chief Operating Officer — Asset Management Fund Control

The mandate

A pricing-source override propagated through several schemes and required a public NAV correction, after which the operations chief resigned. Fund accountants have repaired the immediate files, but control ownership across investment operations, the registrar and the accounting provider remains disputed.

The interim must start within two weeks and remain for twelve months, covering two half-year reporting cycles and peak transaction periods. The permanent COO search commences after the first independent controls opinion, with a mandatory six-week overlap inside the fixed term.

Completion requires two consecutive reporting cycles without material NAV correction, daily exception closure inside agreed tolerances, independently verified provider controls and a tested investor-notification protocol. The successor must chair one full trustee operations review and accept all remaining low-risk exceptions.

The interim may suspend pricing sources, reject NAV release, enforce provider remediation and spend up to ₹7 crore from the approved control budget. Investor compensation above ₹10 crore, provider replacement, scheme closure, permanent structural changes and any release against a red control require trustee or board approval.

Investment selection, distribution economics and product launches unrelated to the control failure are excluded. Legal interpretation of investor redress stays with Compliance and Counsel, although the COO must execute the resulting operational decision.

Why this seat is open

The correction revealed a chain of operational approvals without one executive owner. Deputies are aligned to separate providers and cannot impartially determine the target control split. The board wants a temporary operator to establish defensible release authority before making the permanent appointment.

What you will own

• Set non-waivable NAV release gates for pricing, corporate actions, cash, units and material manual adjustments.
• Reconstruct the error chronology and convert each root cause into a named preventive or detective control.
• Decide pricing-source hierarchy and override permissions with immutable evidence for every exceptional valuation.
• Enforce registrar and fund-accounting-provider remediation through sampled outputs, contractual remedies and executive attestations.
• Design and exercise an investor-impact protocol covering correction, notification, compensation calculation and trustee escalation.
• Certify two clean reporting cycles through independent control testing and transparent residual-exception reporting.
• Transfer the provider control matrix, scheme exposures, compensation decisions, operational calendar and talent review to the permanent COO.

Candidate qualifications

• Served as COO, head of fund operations or asset-servicing director in a mutual fund, asset manager or custodian.
• Managed NAV production and correction across pricing, corporate actions, cash, units and transfer-agent dependencies.
• Led investor redress following a material operational error under trustee and regulator scrutiny.
• Held release authority over outsourced fund-accounting or registrar outputs.
• Directed complex provider remediation with measurable control testing rather than contractual assurances alone.
• Understands Indian mutual-fund operations, trustee governance and investor-service requirements.

Non-negotiables

• Available to assume Mumbai release accountability within fourteen days.
• No current relationship with the incumbent registrar, fund accountant or pricing-data supplier.
• Will disclose prior NAV corrections and any associated regulatory finding.
• Must have exercised operational sign-off over live fund valuations.

1. 49 words maximum. State your earliest start date and any provider conflict relevant to this mandate.
2. 49 words maximum. Describe a NAV error you corrected, including investor impact and the control that prevented recurrence.
3. 49 words maximum. Which override should automatically stop a NAV release?