We are very pleased to announce that our team at ScalingFunds is growing. Callum Fleetwood-Storey will be joining us as our new Business Development Associate helping with the onboarding of new clients. We have asked him several questions on why he joined ScalingFunds, his experience with the fund industry and what he hopes to achieve in his new position. Please join us in welcoming our new team member.
Several underlying factors helped me make the exciting decision to join ScalingFunds; if one takes a step back and examines the investment management landscape, for all of its efficiencies and utilisation of technology, this pioneering innovation has yet to substantially trickle down and have a significant effect on the back office portion of the industry. The majority of service providers remain segmented with no real cohesion when it comes to servicing funds – something that I have experienced first hand having most recently worked within a private debt fund. Even with their best intentions, the process of completing KYC/AML or onboarding tasks were often cumbersome and exhausting for all parties. I know that I am not the only person to have experienced these pain points and so when presented the opportunity to be part of the solution by joining the ScalingFunds team, it was simply something I could not turn down. I have been fortunate enough in my working career to be in an industry that I have a great interest in and have really enjoyed. ScalingFunds allows me to continue to be part of this industry whilst at the same time being able to offer cutting edge technology solutions that I believe will help revolutionise the fund services industry.
I have been fortunate enough to gain direct exposure to, and work for several leading entities across the private markets and alternative investment spectrum ranging from aviation leasing to prime UK real estate and everything in between. Most recently, I worked as the Head of BD and IR at a private debt investment manager focusing on frontier market opportunities. The breadth of this exposure has allowed me to observe and understand that no asset class is immune to the inefficiencies facing the industry whether this relates to the asset raising or the investment management functions of a fund. There has been and remains a seismic shift in how institutional investors allocate their capital and those investment strategies which were possibly deemed too exotic for many portfolios are now commanding a bigger slice of investable capital that presents a myriad of opportunities for all.
My goal at ScalingFunds is to help enable the company to grow into an industry-leading fund management solution provider that ultimately helps unlock the asset management industry for the masses and enables access to investment products that would otherwise be restricted to institutional capital. Alongside this, I would like to grow within the company as it embarks on its global expansion.
I think the general trend of consolidation is likely to continue in the middle and top end of the investment/asset management side of the industry. Of course, boutique managers will continue to prosper given they have their ‘edge’ – and can continue to provide that edge. I think that private markets will also continue to gain a larger overall market share of invested capital as institutions allocate their capital in an increasingly diversified manner away from public market strategies. If I focus on the part of the services of the industry, there needs to be a seismic shift in its ability to efficiently service its underlying clients. The antithetical relationship that exists between these two sections of investment management needs to rebalance and I think that blockchain technology can be the driving force in doing this.
