New Managers September 2012

Servicers' Spot - Conifer: Smaller hedge fund managers like cloud technology

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Conifer: Smaller hedge fund managers like cloud technology

Jack McDonald

According to Jack McDonald, the CEO of Conifer, a fund administrator, we are still in the early innings of the adoption of cloud technology in the asset services industry; yet newer and smaller hedge fund managers tend to adopt Cloud at the outset, as it offers a solid middle and back office infrastructure for a cheaper price.

The Conifer Group is a 24-year-old fund administrator and asset servicing firm, headquartered in San Francisco. The group has three businesses; Conifer Securities, which is a broker dealer that does outsourced trade execution as well as prime brokerage; Conifer Fund Services, which is a middle office and fund administration platform; and the newest business, which is a joint venture called InvestCloud Solutions, a cloud-based data aggregation and reporting portal business.

"In the asset management world and beyond, the concept of the cloud refers to where the technology infrastructure hardware and software is hosted, how it gets maintained, and it speaks very much to the cost advantages and security advantages around this new type of technology," MacDonald told Opalesque in an interview. As indeed, cloud technology has allowed the firm to revolutionize how it integrates different data sources into one common place and how it renders that data and use it in a constructive and value-added way for its managers and for its investors.

Most people already use and trust their financial information to cloud technology with e-commerce websites like Amazon and eBay

Data stored in the cloud-based infrastructure is much more secure than data stored in one's own server because of the disaster recovery cap......................

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This article was published in Opalesque's New Managers a top-down monthly analysis, news and research publication on the global emerging manager space.