I am strongly analytical, have a keen sense of long-term investment strategy and have a “can do” attitude. This is proven by my achievements within the Finance domain by working as an ALM Advisor at PGGM, one of the largest pension funds in the Netherlands, and working as a Product Manager for OpenBB, a fintech start-up democratising access to investment research. Furthermore, I have a strong educational background in Finance, CFA level 1 and the post-master education titled Registered Financial Analyst (VBA/RBA) completed. This education not only discusses much of the relevant theory but also gives many examples of how these theories are currently applied within a multitude of different investment organisations.

Furthermore, throughout the last several years I’ve spent thousands of hours developing in Python in the areas of quantitative and statistical modelling, and data science. Find all of my currently active open-source projects inside the projects page which include the Finance Database and Financial Toolkit with both well over 2.000 GitHub Stars as well as the OpenBB Terminal in which I am one of the leading contributors with major contributions in the area of fundamental analysis, economics, fixed income and econometrics.

All of this comes together within my current role as Quantitative Investment Strategist at a.s.r. asset management, one of the largest insurance companies in the Netherlands. Within this role, I am responsible for spearheading innovative initiatives within the asset management divisions by utilizing Python, particularly in portfolio analytics and optimization. Furthermore, I conduct Asset Liability Management (ALM) and Strategic Asset Allocation (SAA) analyses, encompassing a spectrum of topics including hedging strategies, liquidity risk management, Solvency II optimization, and asset-only studies.

Skills

This section includes all my skills and the level of proficiency I have in each of them. I am first and foremost a Financial professional with proper education but I also have a strong background in programming and data science. This combination of skills is what makes me unique and allows me to work on a wide range of projects ranging from actuarial models to portfolio analysis tools to data science projects.

MS Excel
MS Excel is the bread and butter for most financial analysis and is strongly embedded in my work and personal projects both through analysis and as data storage. A great example is the Finance Database that relies on compressed CSVs to store data and allow for easy adjustments where needed.
Python
Python is my main programming language which I have invested thousands of hours in by now. I have used it for a wide range of applications ranging from actuarial models, financial analysis, data science, web development, machine learning and much more. This is distributed evenly between institutional and personal projects.
Git
Git goes hand in hand with any programming language and is a tool I use on a daily basis. I have used it for both personal and institutional projects and have a strong understanding of how to use it in a team setting as well. Next to that, I also got used to using linters such as Black, Ruff, Mypy, Pylint and Bandit to ensure code quality as well as set up automatic testing through GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines.
SQL
I've obtained experience with SQL through several channels. First and foremost, I got used to using it through Google Spreadsheets as a way to query larger datasets. Later on, I also got to use it with Metabase to parse large datasets. Lastly, I've used it in Python to explore creating queries from the Finance Database.
MATLAB
Both in college and during my time at PGGM, MATLAB was used. I've learned how to read and write code as PGGM was expanding its ALM model and later on transition it to Python. This allowed me to really understand the language and understand the advantages it has over other languages.
Excel VBA
Through my career I've seen the reliance on Excel VBA and therefore ensured I know the basics of how the read and write the language to supercharge Excel files where needed. This is especially useful for automating tasks and creating custom functions.
R Studio
Being proficient in Python, made getting the hang of R Studio relatively straight forward. It also was the basis of some financial courses during college. Even though I don't use it as much anymore, it remains an easy to pick up language for me.
CS33 & HTML
I used to own a Web Design firm in which I got most of my CS33 & HTML experience from. Next to that, this website is a great consistent refresher on everything CSS and HTML. I also greatly value this experience because of how thoroughly it is embedded in other programs making it much easier for me to work with those.
JavaScript
This website is my main experience with JavaScript. I've learned it while designing much of the content as found here. A great example are the docs of the Finance Toolkit that are automatically generated based on JavaScript and collecting from files found on GitHub.
Azure Ecosystem
Through my time at PGGM and ASR I got the hang of the Azure Ecosystem which includes Azure DevOps, Azure Pipelines, Azure Artifacts and Azure Machine Learning. This helped me in maintaining models through Azure DevOps and testing them adequately through Azure Pipelines in which I push the models to Azure Artifacts. Lastly, I've then used Azure Machine Learning to deploy models to production.
GitHub Ecosystem
All of my open-source projects, like Finance Database and Finance Toolkit are hosted on the GitHub Ecosysyem. I've gotten very familiar with GitHub and how to work with GitHub Actions to automate workflows. Given my time at OpenBB, I've also really gotten the hang of how to organize projects on GitHub, define automatic tests and setting up a proper branch policy structure.
PowerBI
I have a good understanding how to work with PowerBI to visualize data. This is especially useful when working with large datasets and wanting to create a dashboard to visualize the data. I've used it to create dashboards for ASR as the models produced datasets that far exceeded what Excel would be able to handle.

Experience

a.s.r. asset management — Quantitative Investment Strategist

February 2024 – Present

As a Quantitative Investment Strategist, my role involves spearheading innovative initiatives within the asset management divisions by utilizing Python, particularly in portfolio analytics and optimization. Additionally, I analyze profitability and investment risks across different risk frameworks (Solvency II and internal models), provide perspectives into portfolio sensitivities and their relationship with liabilities, and apply Artificial Intelligence (AI) to uncover new insights. Moreover, I conduct Asset Liability Management (ALM) and Strategic Asset Allocation (SAA) analyses, encompassing a spectrum of topics including hedging strategies, liquidity risk management, Solvency II optimization, and asset-only studies.

a.s.r. asset management — Financial Risk Analyst

June 2023 – February 2024

As a Financial Risk Analyst, I analyze profitability and investment risks in different risk frameworks (Solvency II and internal models), provide insights into portfolio sensitivities and their relationship with liabilities, assess the impact of month-to-month changes and contribute to the development of Python models for improved valuation and financial risk measurement.

OpenBB — Product Manager

February 2022 – June 2023

Within this role I oversaw all Product Marketing initiatives which include designing the entire strategy regarding our initiatives for Academia, identifying market gaps within the financial sector and strategize accordingly, leading a multi-disciplinary Go-to-Market team and coordinating Engineering developments that require significant financial knowledge either through developing the quantitative models myself or guiding Engineering professionals in the design and implementation.

PGGM — ALM Advisor

July 2019 – February 2022

As an ALM Advisor, I provided actuarial and strategy recommendations for several Dutch pension funds and was responsible for the development and maintenance of our econometric model in MATLAB and led most of the technical developments for the new econometric model in Python. These models are used to perform ALM, URM and VEV calculations. Furthermore, I worked actively in the development of (interactive) dashboards and GUIs as well as the implementation of A.I. (Machine Learning) techniques.

Education

CFA Society Netherlands — Register Beleggingsanalist (VBA)

September 2020 – June 2023

The RBA Program, previously known as VBA, is a modular program tailored to the experienced investment professional organized by CFA Institute. The program provides insights in the entirety of the investment cycle, new market innovations and the role of investment leadership that shape the future of the investment industry.

Utrecht University — MSc Banking & Finance

September 2017 – June 2019

Quantitative track with courses in Investment Management, Advanced Econometrics, Asset Pricing, Risk Management and Python courses in Algorithmic Trading, Risk Management and Data Science. My Master thesis covered the impact of interest rate deductability limits on capital structure decisions and was rewarded with a 7.5. I’ve done a Pre-Master of Finance prior to this.

Hanze University of Applied Sciences — Bachelor of Economics (BEc)

September 2013 - July 2017

A broad perspective of Economics and also a strong focus on soft skills including extensive communication skills, teamwork, analytical skills and adaptability. I was also an Ambassador of the Green Quest, an initiative to achieve zero-emission for the University and minimise waste to (almost) 0%.

Certifications

Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) – Level 1

Focused on knowledge and comprehension of investment tools and asset classes. Find credentials here

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) – Product Owner

Centered around the Scrum methodology and leading a team as Product Owner. Find credentials here.

Testimonials

View all of these testimoninals on my LinkedIn profile as well as found here.

Didier Lopes - CEO at OpenBB

On the 13th of October 2021, I received an email from Jeroen about adding one of his finance GitHub packages to the OpenBB Terminal (then Gamestonk Terminal). After digging into his open source projects and his achievements I was very impressed. When we had a chat regarding how to work together, I offered him a job on the spot. Jeroen was at the intersection of finance, programming and open source - which is a combination that is very hard to find - even today (almost 2 years later).

Jeroen ended up joining us a few months after that initial meeting. He started in the role of Product Manager where he helped drive the direction of the OpenBB Terminal, not only from a product perspective but also joining the development team. Menus such as economy, portfolio, econometrics, fixed income are Jeroen’s legacy and they wouldn’t have the quality they have today without Jeroen’s financial theory knowledge - ultimately, the team saw Jeroen as the go-to person when financial theory was involved.

More recently, Jeroen shifted to the role of Product Marketing Manager so that he could focus on the go-to market and showing users (through documentation, webinars, videos) how they could use OpenBB products for real use cases. In addition, he led OpenBB’s academia motion, and created presentations such as “The Greek Government Debt Crisis”, “Performing Financial Due Diligence” and “The Influence of the Central Bank” which used OpenBB for research and were presented at different universities in the UK and Netherlands.

Apart from his financial expertise, I always admired Jeroen’s work ethic and organization skills. As a startup founder, you want people on your team that get shit done, and Jeroen was one of those people. I never had to worry with a task not being done, or being done late. If anything, he always went above and beyond. I highly recommend Jeroen.

Minh Hoang - Product Manager at OpenBB

I highly recommend Jeroen as an asset in any organization. Jeroen led and executed OpenBB’s go-to-market initiatives, including Academia, with exceptional skill. It is not easy to find Jeroen’s combination of solid finance knowledge and Programming knowledge. On top of that, he consistently demonstrates a strong work ethic and a drive to achieve outstanding results.

Sri Chilukuri - Vice President of Product Marketing at OpenBB

Jeroen has been a delight to work with. With his expertise in investment research and “can do” attitude, he quickly transformed himself into an excellent product marketing manager at OpenBB. In fact, I would not hesitate to say that he was often the lone sane voice in helping steer the heavily engineering-centric company in the right business direction. His leadership of the highly successful OpenBB Terminal 2.0 launch event in November 2022 and the company’s ongoing go-to-market (GTM) push into Academia are testaments to his newly acquired product marketing skills as well as his overall professionalism. Jeroen has my highest recommendation and I look forward to working with him again in the future.

Luuk van Benthem - Senior ALM Adviseur at PGGM

Jeroen joined our team just at the right time. As we were considering a full redevelopment of our ALM model, Jeroen’s knowledge of Python first greatly helped us in the decision process. In the implementation phase Jeroen played a key role on the development of the technical side of the model. Meanwhile he did a good job at educating our team on these new topics and providing good documentation. Working together with Jeroen was a pleasure. First of all he’s a nice guy, Furthermore he provided an alternative way of thinking and working that was new for us and helped us innovate and work more efficiently. Over time I learned a lot from Jeroen which I’m very thankful for!

Pascal Janssen - Strategisch ALM Adviseur at PGGM

(Written in Dutch) Jeroen is zeer bedreven in alle facetten van programmeren in Python. Zijn kennis en ervaring op het gebied van Python hebben een grote meerwaarde geleverd voor mijn afdeling. Jeroen is scherp als het aankomt op het juist implementeren van code in Python. Daarnaast is hij ook bedreven in het draaiend krijgen en houden van Python op werkplekken en de ondersteuning die hierbij nodig is. Hij is gedreven om altijd verbeteringen aan te brengen en handmatige processen te automatiseren. Jeroen werkt zeer gestructureerd en is met een positieve insteek bezig met zijn eigen ontwikkeling en hoe hij zelf beter kan worden in het vakgebied. Al met al een fijne collega!