Asset Liability Director
A two-day exploratory seminar at an insurance company set a teenaged Kimberlene Matthews on a path to becoming an actuary. Now she runs the Pension and Enterprise Solutions group in PNC's Institutional Asset Management arm. "I love math; I always did," she said.
A Jamaica native and the oldest of seven children, Matthews immigrated to the Chicago area with her family at age 9 and still lives there. As an actuary student – "It was the perfect fit for what I wanted to do" – Matthews interned at Allstate Insurance, then at consulting firm Mercer. She failed the actuarial exam twice, but decided to sit for two of the exams at the same time, redoubling her studying and passing the tests.
She and her husband, an accountant, met while at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and now have two school-aged children. "We're a family of numbers," laughed Matthews, who holds a CFA in addition to her actuarial certifications.
After graduation, Matthews started at Mercer, then at Aon Hewitt. Early on, she worked with pension funds, and then learned about investing while moving through the actuarial exams. She discovered "people who were able to use the actuarial knowledge and concepts to create investment strategies," she recalled. "That's how I started out in the investment space."
Northern Trust recruited her in 2012 to use her actuarial expertise to support its investment business. Then, in 2016, she moved to $562 billion-asset PNC Bank, which wanted to offer more services to pensions. Matthews was a founder of the group she now runs, which helps PNC's clients – typically smaller pension plans – that use reporting, communications and client experience that she designed. Eventually, her manager asked for her ideas on what the group could do for other types of clients. Matthews' team of 10 now helps pensions, foundations, endowments and other institutions make investment decisions.
"In 2021, Kimberlene launched the business' Enterprise Financial Modeling Solution, a remarkable and innovative tool that captures the impact of a client's financial and investment decisions and delivers a financial forecast 'blueprint' in words and numbers," said her manager, Alistair Jessiman, an executive vice president and head of PNC Institutional Asset Management. "These industry-leading models aim to determine how investment and strategic decisions impact key financial metrics and overall financial wellbeing for institutions of varied sizes, industries and objectives."
Matthews, now a managing director, has always enjoyed running the analysis herself. Now that she's the group head, she is glad to explain the numbers to clients. "I like being in the room with decision makers, helping them understand things," she said. "That's my favorite part of the job." As a bonus, her team is tight-knit and collaborative, she said.
"Kim is a professional through and through, and her team's analytics provide PNC's main street corporate clients, nonprofits, and other institutions the ability to see and execute on a better future," said Carole Brown, head of PNC's Asset Management Group.
In the two decades she's been in finance, Matthews has seen more women – like Brown – take positions of power. The numbers are still small, but growing, especially at PNC, she said. "It's not just having a seat at the table but having a voice to affect change."
