The seat, not the umbrella
Collateral, margin, stock loan, clearing, and coverage are different jobs. Emerald will not treat the umbrella title as if it named the work.
Prime brokerage
Prime brokerage, financing, and clearing.
Emerald recruits prime finance, stock loan, margin, collateral, clearing, client service, relationship management, and the operations seats around them. This page is for firms building or expanding that function, and for people whose work sits in one of those seats rather than all of them.
The market
Where the talent sits, and what usually goes wrong.
Prime brokerage is not one job. Financing, clearing, stock loan, client service, risk, operations, and relationship management change what “good” looks like. A search that uses the function name and skips the seat hires the wrong neighbor.
Role distinctions
The differences that change the slate.
Relationship management
A prime-brokerage relationship manager is a coverage seat inside that ecosystem, not a generic sales hire and not an operations hire with a client on the phone.
Buildouts
Standing up a function is a different search from filling one empty chair. Scope, sequencing, and which seat has to exist first all change the slate.
How Emerald runs it
Map, then screen.
Emerald starts by separating the seats the firm is actually building, then maps each one. Candidates are screened for the specific work, not for the words “prime brokerage” on a résumé.
For clients
Say which seats you are standing up and which already exist. A buildout that pretends every hire is the same profile will interview a pile of adjacent people.
For candidates
Name the seat: financing, stock loan, margin, collateral, clearing, coverage, or operations. Emerald represents that work, not a broader label that will not survive the first interview.
Proof
What we can actually say.
Emerald has helped multiple firms build or expand prime-brokerage-related functions. The useful story is how the role changes across financing, clearing, stock loan, client service, risk, operations, and relationship management — not a client logo.
Questions we actually get
What does a prime brokerage relationship manager actually do?
It is the coverage seat inside prime brokerage, kept separate from financing, stock loan, margin, collateral, clearing, and operations. Emerald will not hire it as generic sales or as operations under another name.
What is the difference between collateral management and margin?
Emerald treats them as different seats. A search that collapses collateral and margin into one profile is already mis-specified. The intake has to say which work the hire will own.