Miguel Palanca

Experience

Experience

Five firms across Singapore, Boston and Manila. An equity financing desk, two asset managers, a custody bank and an investment bank.

My journey has taken me from Singapore to Boston and back, and now to Spain. I did my undergraduate degree at Northeastern in Boston, a master's in Applied Finance at Singapore Management University, and I am now doing a master's in Business Analytics and Data Science at IE Business School in Madrid. The same habit shows up across all of it. I find the part of the job that is manual or unmeasured, and I build something that fixes it.

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Professional experience

Jul 2024 to Dec 2024

Singapore

ING

Intern, Strategic Equity Transactions. Client Solutions Group, Financial Markets

I interned on the Strategic Equity Transactions desk in ING's Client Solutions Group, a sales and structuring team inside Financial Markets, and helped across the group's rates, FX and commodities desks. Most of my time went on the materials that carry a transaction through the bank: pitchbooks setting out how a structure works and what it does for the client, credit rationale packs, and materials for the desk's product expansion plan.

The rest was analytical support. I sat with the traders while they priced interest rate, cross-currency and total return swaps, and helped put the numbers together, which is where I learned how XVA and CVA adjustments actually feed into a quote. I also supported a study of accelerated bookbuild and IPO trends across a large set of transactions, for the deal-contingent risk work.

Notable achievements

  • Built pitchbooks for structured equity transactions, used in live client conversations.
  • Supported swap pricing alongside the traders, including XVA and CVA adjustments.
  • Supported analysis of IPO and accelerated bookbuild trends for risk and positioning work.
  • Put together credit rationale packs feeding into due diligence and credit approval.

Six months on a desk taught me more about how a bank actually prices and approves a trade than any amount of reading would have.

Sep 2020 to Jun 2021

Boston, MA

Natixis Investment Managers

Product Analyst, Investment Product Management

At Natixis Investment Managers I was a full-time Product Analyst for the US Distribution team within Investment Product Management, managing product reporting, statistics and data for mutual funds across equity, derivatives, fixed income and multi-asset strategies.

Much of the value I added was in automation. The reporting was manual and repetitive when I arrived, so I rebuilt it, and worked with a project team to standardise the RFP process using data pipelines rather than hand assembly. The rest of the role was due diligence questionnaires, RFIs and RFPs for institutional clients, and producing factsheets, performance profiles and pitchbooks.

Notable achievements

  • Automated the daily reporting process with VBA, cutting the time required by over 50% within the first two weeks at the firm.
  • Standardised RFPs with a project team using data pipelines, reducing manual inbound requests by 30%.
  • Reviewed performance and benchmark metrics before each upload to the central data repository.

Natixis is where automating my own work became a habit. The daily reporting took half a morning when I arrived, and less than half of that by the end of my first two weeks.

Jan 2019 to Jun 2019

Boston, MA

Brown Brothers Harriman

Trade Management Co-op. Risk, Control & Analytics

At Brown Brothers Harriman I was a co-op in Risk, Control and Analytics on the Trade Management team.

I automated the weekly trade summary models and led the design of a new client contact database, alongside monitoring global trade, economics and market updates, escalating key information to senior management, and watching trade and cash flows for discrepancies.

Notable achievements

  • Automated the weekly trade summary models.
  • Led the design of a new client contact database in SharePoint.
  • Managed two further client-service database projects in parallel.
  • Reported and escalated global market updates to senior management.

It was the first time I built something other people relied on every week, and the first time I designed a database from scratch.

Jan 2018 to Jun 2018

Boston, MA

Arrowstreet Capital

Trade Compliance Intern Associate

Arrowstreet Capital is a quantitative investment manager, and this was my first look at how a systematic shop actually runs: risk management, active portfolio management and the controls around a trading process driven by models rather than discretion.

I examined restricted lists for client portfolios, ran pre-trade session checks (144A and Bloomberg manual security checks), reconciled trades against corporate and client portfolio governance restrictions, and monitored account overdrafts caused by trade movements and cash flow changes.

Notable achievements

  • Implemented SQL queries supporting the daily checklist and compliance letter verification process.
  • Digitised SMA investment management agreements so the department could search them by keyword.
  • Processed restricted lists and security checks, keeping pre-trade activity aligned with client portfolio restrictions.

A model makes the decision there, and a set of controls decides what is allowed to happen. The pre-trade gates in Argus do the same job.

Jun 2016 to Aug 2016

Manila, Philippines

Chinabank Capital

Investment Banking Summer Intern

Chinabank Capital was my first work experience. As an Investment Banking Summer Intern I saw a wide range of transactions across Philippine capital markets: mergers and acquisitions, structured credit, debt securities advisory and fundraising.

I researched more than five target acquisition companies, preparing corporate summaries, financial models and valuations. I spread historical financial statements, analysed debt maturity profiles and developed projections to support transaction decisions.

Notable achievements

  • Conducted financial analysis and modelling for target acquisition companies.
  • Supported equity and debt transactions by preparing materials for IPOs and bond offerings.

It is still the only IPO and bond work I have done, and spreading statements and building projections that summer is where my modelling started.

Education

Three degrees, three countries. Northeastern gave me the finance grounding and, through its co-op programme, placements at Arrowstreet Capital and Brown Brothers Harriman. SMU is where the markets work went deep, into valuation, derivatives and structured products. IE is where I am filling in the data science.

IE Business SchoolIn progress

Master in Business Analytics and Data Science Apr 2026 to Apr 2027

Madrid. I am using it to formalise the engineering and data science side of the work I had already been doing on my own, and to put proper theory under the parts I learned by building.

CourseworkStatistics for Data Science, time series forecasting with ARIMA and GARCH, SQL and modern data architecture, and Python. Machine Learning I this term.

Singapore Management University

MSc. Applied Finance Jan 2025

Singapore. The most useful year for the markets side of what I do, particularly structured products and derivatives valuation. I was also team captain for the Bloomberg Trading Competition in 2023. We ran large cap momentum and did not place well, because we were too conservative on risk while the market was running.

CourseworkQuantitative Trading Strategies, Equity Analysis and Portfolio Management, Fixed Income and Derivatives Analysis, Structured Products, Corporate Finance, Quantitative Methods and Economic Analysis

ProjectsTwo full valuation models, on Tesla and on Eversource, both written up and presented. A structured products proposal across a suite of products for a client case. And the quant trading module, which was the one I got the most out of: we built a mean-reversion strategy and a momentum strategy there, and the momentum one became Elder's Triple Screen, which is still running in the platform today.

Northeastern UniversityUndergraduate

BSBA Finance May 2020

Boston. Northeastern runs on co-ops, which is how I ended up at Arrowstreet Capital and Brown Brothers Harriman while still an undergraduate. Exchange programme at McGill in Montreal.

CourseworkPortfolio Management, Financial Data Analysis with Python, Investments, Corporate Finance

ProjectsEquity research reports, a derivatives trading strategy proposal, portfolio construction and optimisation, and a Python financial analysis project on US equities.

United World College of South East Asia

International Baccalaureate & IGCSE May 2015

Singapore.

ProjectsAmerican Football (SAS), volunteering at St Theresa's Home, guitar

Toolkit

Programming & data

PythonSQLPostgreSQLApache IcebergQuestDBpandasFastAPIDagsterDockerKubernetes (k3s)GitVBA

Quantitative methods

Factor modellingInformation coefficient weightingWalk-forward validationRegime detection (HMM)XGBoostMomentum & mean reversionCointegration testingRisk parityPortfolio optimisationMonte Carlo simulation

Markets & products

Derivatives pricingXVA/CVARates & cross-currency swapsStructured productsDirect indexing & tax-loss harvestingEquity researchFinancial modelling

Platforms

BloombergFactSetCapital IQQuantConnect / LEANDatabentoInteractive BrokersGrafanaAWS