Episode 127: Ops That Actually Work: Real Stories from the Front Lines with Ultimus Fund Solutions

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In this industry, everyone talks about innovation. But innovation rarely starts in a conference room. It starts when a client hits a wall. When they’re overwhelmed, under pressure, or staring at an opportunity they can’t quite reach alone.

That’s where Ultimus Fund Solutions steps in. This team doesn’t just throw tech at the problem. They roll up their sleeves, pick up the phone, and build real solutions, side by side with their clients.

In this episode, you’ll hear what that actually looks like:

• A multi-billion-dollar RIA streamlining 400+ SMAs and mutual funds into a single ETF that’s now at $1.2B and climbing

• A $20B alternatives manager slashing launch time nearly in half with Ultimus Gateway

• A private credit strategy that didn’t exist until Amanda’s team built it, piece by piece

• A middle office crew turning “random one-off asks” into a well-oiled machine

• A data team translating challenging requests into crystal-clear, decision-ready KPIs

If you’ve ever wondered what a true partnership feels like in financial services, this is your peek behind the curtain.

More About Ultimus:

Ultimus Fund Solutions delivers fund servicing, middle and back office support, and one-of-a-kind solutions across ETFs, mutual funds, private funds, and alternatives, with real people who actually listen, collaborate, and deliver.

Learn more at billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus

TRANSCRIPT

Below is an AI-generated transcript and therefore it may contain errors. 

[00:00:00] Stacy Havener: In this industry, everyone talks about innovation, but the truth is innovation rarely starts in a conference room. It starts with a client who's stuck, overwhelmed, or staring at a massive opportunity that they can't unlock alone. Ultimas Fund Solutions has built an entire culture around answering those moments with tech.

[00:00:26] Yes. But with people first in this episode, you'll hear the real stories. The private credit team who built a scalable solution alongside a client. The retail alts experts who shaved months and millions off a fund launch the data team that refuses to lead with the word no and the middle office crew turning misfit tasks into mission critical wins.

[00:00:54] These are real clients with real problems. You might even see yourself in some of these [00:01:00] stories, and these are real people building real solutions. This is what it looks like when service becomes partnership, and partnership becomes transformation 

[00:01:13] Hey, my name is Stacey Er. I'm obsessed with startups, stories, and sales. Storytelling has fueled my success as a female founder in the Toughest Boys Club, wall Street. I've raised over 8 billion that has led to 30 billion in follow-on assets for investment boutiques, you could say, against the odds. Yeah, understatement.

[00:01:39] I share stories of the people behind the portfolios while teaching you how to use story to shape outcomes. It's real talk here. Money, authenticity, growth, setbacks, sales and marketing are all topics we discuss. Think of this as the capital raising class you wish you had in college mixed with happy hour.[00:02:00] 

[00:02:00] Pull up a seat, grab your notebook, and get ready to be inspired and challenged while you learn. This is the Billion Dollar Backstory podcast.

[00:02:13] first up, you'll meet Mike Prendergast, who specializes in helping clients navigate the operational and regulatory maze of launching ETFs. And in this story, Mike walks us through a client with billions under management who wanted to combine mutual funds and hundreds of SMA into a single ETF.

[00:02:35] Here's what it took to make that vision real.

[00:02:38] 

[00:02:39] 

[00:02:39] Stacy Havener: When 

[00:02:39] you were a kid, what did you wanna be when you grew up 

[00:02:43] Mike Prendergast: A fireman. 

[00:02:43] Stacy Havener: You did. I have an uncle who's a fireman. That's a very noble profession. Why did you wanna be a fireman? I don't know. 

[00:02:50] Mike Prendergast: I just thought it'd be cool riding around in In the ladder truck. 

[00:02:53] Stacy Havener: Yeah, right. 

[00:02:54] Mike Prendergast: I had an uncle who 

[00:02:55] was a fireman .

[00:02:57] Stacy Havener: They're 

[00:02:57] heroes 

[00:02:58] Mike Prendergast: and every so often he would drive [00:03:00] by the house. He would do the siren fire, as you know. Yeah. 

[00:03:05] Stacy Havener: That is so cool. When you think about that childhood dream and you think about what you do now, which obviously are very far away, do you feel like literally you have to put out fires in your day job?

[00:03:18] Mike Prendergast: Oh, definitely. My, my, my, my career has been nothing but, um, adding comm or coordinating solutions to complex problems, 

[00:03:27] Stacy Havener: also known as you 

[00:03:28] Mike Prendergast: always keeping fire, always keeping it cool, fire, 

[00:03:31] Stacy Havener: always keeping it cool no matter how hot those fires are running. I love that. Okay. We're gonna come back to that at the end.

[00:03:38] Okay. So tell me about this client. Who's the client we're gonna tell a story about today? Describe them. 

[00:03:43] Mike Prendergast: So this client, uh, very large, uh, RIA has a large RIA business, but also had a couple of mutual funds, which, uh, one they inherited through a, a merger or a buyout. And another fund they had that was, was small, but obviously there was, uh, [00:04:00] there were bigger asset management, just an RIA manager.

[00:04:03] And they were part of a bigger sort of RIA complex that was in growth mode and in acquiring other family offices. So this client was basically looking to start an ETF and doing so by taking a lot of their SMA assets and doing, uh, doing a conversion of those assets into the ETF strategy. And at the same time, they wanted to merge the two existing mutual funds into the ETF.

[00:04:31] Stacy Havener: Oh my gosh. Why did they wanna do that? What was the advan, what was their point of view on why the ETF would, would be more advantageous than the three separate things that had going on? 

[00:04:41] Mike Prendergast: So they wanted the, their interest in the ETF for the daily trading of the ETF itself. Mm-hmm. In today with the marketplace.

[00:04:49] They also wanted to have a vehicle that their RIAs could actually invest in. So put it on their platform. So instead of managing the SMA account with [00:05:00] basically the same strategy, 'cause the SMA accounts that they had were all exact same strategy and they had hundreds of them. So, so they were managing, you know, and they did an investment in a certain security, they would basically have to, you know, do it in 400 different accounts.

[00:05:16] So. Taking that strategy and putting it into the ETF just allows you to basically manage one investment pool of assets versus, you know, create significant efficiencies for them. And then going forward they, uh, were able to put that on platforms so folks could just buy the ETF in their customer's account and not have to basically kick off and manage, you know, the, the, the underlying asset.

[00:05:42] The other thing from an ETF perspective that was very appealing to them is since they're all these were all taxable accounts, the ET TF structure inherently is more tax efficient than managing these assets in a separately managed taxable account. Just because the, in-kind nature of the, of the ETF, how they do [00:06:00] creations and redemptions, there's some tax sufficiency benefits that the portfolio manager can utilize to limit the amount of, uh, capital gains that investors may, may have to pay on a year to year basis.

[00:06:13] Stacy Havener: Let's talk about tax a little bit more here because. When you do some, this is like a complex type of amalgamation we're creating here in this ETF. Was it an active ETF? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So I want you to tell me about the active ETF piece and the tax consequence or not of this merger into the ETF, because I think there's, there's a perception.

[00:06:43] The reason I want you to talk about this a little bit is there's a perception that that is in and of itself is going to be a taxable event, which I don't think it is, right? 

[00:06:51] Mike Prendergast: Correct. It's not if they, yeah. Okay. If they follow certain rules, these mergers of assets with the mutual funds and with the SMA [00:07:00] accounts, they're done under what we call 3 51 conversion.

[00:07:03] It's part of a tax. The, the tax rules are the tax provision that if certain conditions to met, so there's an IRS tax diversification that the funds have to pass. Where is, so the. The pool of assets that each taxable entity is, is contributing, has to pass an IRS diversification test, which is, um, you know, 25%, not more than one security can be more than 25% of what they're contributing.

[00:07:29] The top five can't be more than 50% of the total. And then so they, you have to run that test individually on each one of the contributors, whatever the taxable entity is. Hmm. So there is some upfront work that needs to be done to make sure that you're in compliance and you have to basically run that testing right up until conversion date.

[00:07:49] 'cause if you don't meet the IRS diversification requirements, then it would become a taxable event for that person. So it's, it's important to understand what that looks like. Do your due [00:08:00] diligence ahead of time, tweak the portfolios if needed. You are running that test basically on conversion date. 'cause you, again, market volatility could be an issue.

[00:08:09] So typically what would happen in this situation, the client's looking at this and if there. And if they're close to, uh, they wanna make sure they leave themselves enough buffer. So purpose of doing the preliminary testing is basically tweak the portfolio and then get it to a range where if there is significant market activity on the day you're converting, we typically do this over a weekend.

[00:08:30] So it's that Friday and you convert it, the end, end of business, you wanna make sure everything's working. And so it's, uh, it's not a, it's something that you're actually monitoring right up until market close on, on conversion date and making any adjustments to the portfolio accordingly. 'cause the goal here is to make sure that your shareholders or the underlying folks do not, this doesn't create a taxable event.

[00:08:54] Because if, if they blew the IRS diversification test, then it would be a [00:09:00] market value event for the, for the holder and uh, basically. Whatever the gains and losses 'cause in, in a sense, they would be transferring their assets into the new fund at market value, not at, not at their cost basis. So that would create a taxable event.

[00:09:15] So it's important to get that right and to make sure that you have a process in place to make sure you can monitor that. We would help where we, we assisted, we ISTs, we as we sort of project managed the whole process for them and then, um, obviously provided some guidance there for them. We did a review of the initial of what they were doing.

[00:09:34] Making sure that we're in, in range. And then obviously we, we conducted the final review of the, of the portfolio on conversion date. That was one of the, I will say, many components that, uh, yeah, of that whole process. But clearly that is an important one. It can be look daunting at first when you go into that, but we sort of help pull together everything that needs to happen and we can get into it in a little further.

[00:09:59] Yeah. But there's a lot of [00:10:00] other, a lot of other moving parts in order for this to help facilitate, obviously the tax free piece of it. Very important and key to making sure that you get that right. And then, then there's a whole operational of mechanics, of moving the assets and everything else. But 

[00:10:14] Stacy Havener: talk about that.

[00:10:16] That's like, I'm, I'm breaking into a cult. I feel like I'm going into a fire on that one. 

[00:10:22] Mike Prendergast: So on there, I mean, obviously, you know, we come in as far as, you know. Managing that whole project. So in order for this to happen, the client needed actually establish an e tf. So they had to, had to go through the process of, uh, providing the regulatory filings to create the ETF.

[00:10:39] This particular case, the client chose to utilize one of our series trusts 

[00:10:43] Stacy Havener: mm-hmm. 

[00:10:43] Mike Prendergast: To actually open up the ETF and being it, it was their first ETF, but they were, what they, what they did is they utilized, one of our series trusts that basically it's a turnkey solution for clients who are looking to start registered product, whether it be mutual fund or an ETF.

[00:10:59] There's an [00:11:00] established board, there's established service providers. It's, it's basically a platform set up for them, has the governance, has the oversight, and, and we basically take care of all the, you know, the infrastructure to support the, to support the ETF client utilized that. Obviously we, we did the initial filing for, for the ETF, and then now we had to convert.

[00:11:22] Go through the process of converting those assets in. So really what that was, it's coordination with all the parties within the ecosystem necessary to make that happen. Mm. So working with working with legal counsel, making sure that various filings were done on a timely basis, and then working then with the SMA record keepers, the custodians, and then with our, our accountants in working with the custodian of the ETF.

[00:11:50] So it was a process to making sure that we were able to get the cost records from the SMA accounts to come in so that we could record it in the funds, [00:12:00] books, and then the movement of those of those assets from the SMA custodian to the ETF custodian. Then on the way back when the assets were received, each one of those SMA accounts were getting ETF shares back basically for their investment into the ETF.

[00:12:17] And then there was a record keeping component of bringing those, bringing those records back to the SMA account. So basically you're taking your lot level history of the securities that were in your SMA account and replacing that now with ET TF shares. Mm-hmm. So you're maintaining the same cost basis or history that you had of the underlining securities.

[00:12:37] They're being replaced now with, with the ETF. And so now that you, you know, that's where you get the tax free event and basically they're holding onto the same cost basis they had of their SMA account. But now, instead of holding IBM. I've got my 10 lots that were IBM now they say I have 10 lots of the CTF at the same cost basis that I contributed [00:13:00] those assets in.

[00:13:01] We coordinated that event and obviously leading up to that it was weeks, weeks of meetings coordinating with, you know, different custodians, different record keepers so that, you know, everyone had the information they need. So that weekend conversion really happened over Friday night goes very smooth and its orderly.

[00:13:23] Stacy Havener: So I wanna talk about the complexity that you just walked us through, which is probably like the surface of the surface of what really goes into it. Right? 

[00:13:33] Mike Prendergast: So when the client wanted to combine two mutual funds 

[00:13:37] Stacy Havener: mm-hmm. 

[00:13:37] Mike Prendergast: And over 400 SMA accounts into one ETF, they wanted a solution in which, you know, we could handle and manage that project for them.

[00:13:49] And, you know, we did so by pulling together, obviously we have a, we have a, we have a very, uh, robust onboarding process in which we coordinated the [00:14:00] efforts with the various folks in the ecosystem to make that combination into one fund happen, orderly, timely, and efficiently for the client without the client having to worry a lot about the whole process.

[00:14:16] Amanda Houston: Perfect. 

[00:14:17] Mike Prendergast: The SMA assets, uh, that were managed to about 600,000,002 mutual funds, uh, combined probably about 120 million. 

[00:14:27] Stacy Havener: And overall assets of the RIA, 

[00:14:29] Mike Prendergast: I think there were three to 4 billion. 

[00:14:31] Stacy Havener: Okay, great. Perfect. 

[00:14:33] Mike Prendergast: The overall assets of the RIA advisor were three to 4 billion. 

[00:14:37] Stacy Havener: Okay. Now we've painted the picture, we've got the hero, we've got the problem.

[00:14:42] TIS has come in and provided the solution. Do we have enough space, like, I don't know how recent this was, is there. So we can either have the success story be, so Friday they had these three separate entities on Monday morning when they came to work, they had an ETF. [00:15:00] That could be the success story. Or if you wanna, you know, do more than that, then you would say that same thing.

[00:15:06] Plus, and now the ETF has X. 

[00:15:09] Mike Prendergast: After the conversion, the client was able to combine the assets of the various entities and they had a $560 million ETF on day one. That has since grown to over 1.2 billion in assets over the course of, uh, the last two years. It also allowed them the ability to actually now offer the ETF product across their various platforms as an investment vehicle for their RIAs, which is helping in distribution for them.

[00:15:39] They have now a more tax efficient product for their taxable clients or the taxable accounts. They're utilizing, primarily utilizing this internally, but they do now have a, a new distribution strategy for this fund, and it's actually as assisting [00:16:00] in as an investment vehicle for their wealth management offices.

[00:16:04] Stacy Havener: Perfect. Okay, so now I wanna come back to the firefighter in you. Okay. And I want you to tell me now that we've just gone through that story and I've made you relive all the moments and the Friday night conversion, which I'm sure is just like a nailbiter. And I want you to talk to me about like, even though you're not running into burning buildings at your day job, I want you to talk about, like, about the fires and that calmness and coolness that you bring.

[00:16:35] To situations that, I mean, this is really complicated stuff. I want you to come back to that fireman analogy again. 

[00:16:42] Mike Prendergast: I mean, when we go through a project like this, it is, we have all the components, you know, basically documented, so. You see these things enough, we have a very detailed project plan and it gets updated as we continue to do these types of things.

[00:16:59] [00:17:00] So I mean, it's, it's really there to prevent, to prevent the forest fire or actually to really just make sure that, you know, we do have a plan for it. That yes, these situations can cause concern, but in many cases we've seen it before. We have a solution for it and, you know, prevent the panic situation or the last minute fire drills to get things done.

[00:17:24] So. Set up for that purpose to, uh, we, we set goals. We clearly document what has to be done step by step and when it needs to get done so carefully monitoring those dates, monitoring the, the goals, making sure that, you know, everyone's accountable for the various tasks that they need to do and they're doing it in a timely basis.

[00:17:45] And obviously we have escalation procedures to make sure that we don't go into a space where we are trying to, you know, jump through hoops to get 

[00:17:54] Stacy Havener: things done 

[00:17:55] Mike Prendergast: the last minute .

[00:17:55] .

[00:17:56] 

[00:17:56] 

[00:17:57] If Mike's world is about simplifying, the [00:18:00] next story is about stepping into an entirely new structure, one that many managers find intimidating until they meet Nick.

[00:18:10] Stacy Havener: I want you to state your name. Okay. State your name and your title at Ultimates Fund Solutions. 

[00:18:17] Nicholas Ablahani: Okay. Nick Ablahani, head of Retail Alternative Administration product at Ultimates Fund Solutions. 

[00:18:24] Stacy Havener: Nice to meet you Nick. Great 

[00:18:26] Nicholas Ablahani: to meet you. Okay, 

[00:18:27] Stacy Havener: so now Nick, what did you wanna be when you grew up?

[00:18:33] Nicholas Ablahani: So, and, and we have talked about this in the past, a few months ago, but I actually wanted to be an actuary when I grew up, which is not something that all the other kids are, are saying. You're, you're hearing basketball players, football players, rock stars. Here I am. Numbers guy. Thought it would be cool to be an actuary when I grew up.

[00:18:53] Stacy Havener: I think it's so amazing what I mean, why did you think it was cool? It is cool, by the way. How did you know [00:19:00] It was cool. 

[00:19:00] Nicholas Ablahani: It was one thing that I, I heard you work with numbers, you utilize an analytical mindset and back in the day it seemed to pay well. So 

[00:19:09] Stacy Havener: there you go. It kind of had all the things going for it now.

[00:19:13] I want you to think about the actuary thing 'cause you're not an actuary, as I'm not, you're not an act. I'm actuary. I went down a different path. You went down a different path. Yeah. I wanna come back to it though, because think about those th three things you said, and you don't have to do the, the pay well one, but like, I want to kind of pull that thread forward when we get to the end where you say, you know, if I think back to my dream of being an actuary, I, I get to work with numbers.

[00:19:37] You know, you kind of like make it come full circle. Okay. So have that swirling around. Okay. Alright. So Nick, talk about in your role and what you specialize in, like what do clients really struggle with here? Like what's the real, what are some real problems or opportunities that people have when it comes to retail?

[00:19:57] Alts? 

[00:19:58] Nicholas Ablahani: Yeah. Yeah. So. [00:20:00] In retail Alts, many asset managers that we're working with, I'd say face similar challenges setting up and, and operating close end funds, which can be both time consuming and costly. Oftentimes, it can take asset managers eight to 10 months to launch interval and tender offer funds.

[00:20:18] And from a cost perspective, without sufficient scale, these vehicles can quickly become cost prohibitive to, to operate. There's also, at times just a general education gap in, in this space. Mm. I work with traditional asset managers looking to enter the alternative space, and then I'm working with alternative asset managers looking to launch registered 40 ACT products sometimes for the first time.

[00:20:45] Mm. So for, for asset managers, new to the, the retail alts, the registered close in fund space. It's important to understand the complexities of launching these types of products, ensuring that their policies and investment [00:21:00] strategies fit in their target vehicle, whether looking to launch A BDC, an interval fund, tender offer fund, we look at them as hybrid products, combining both alternative strategies, but putting it into this registered.

[00:21:16] 40 act wrap. So making sure that they're thinking through things like the size and seeding strategy of the fund, thinking through nav frequency and, and valuation. So you're, you're dealing with illiquid securities level three assets that are hard to value, but if you go into an interval fund, you have to value them on a, a daily basis.

[00:21:36] You're, you're striking a, a daily nav. And then thinking through things like liquidity management, where shareholder liquidity can vary between the fund structures, but again, going into an interval fund, they have to have a fundamental policy to repurchase between five and 25%. Of the outstanding shares at, at a set interval.

[00:21:56] So kind of just tying this back into what's the problem at [00:22:00] hand? Yeah. How do we improve time to market cost pressure and ensure that we are involved from a, an early stage for product structuring conversations with these perspective clients looking to enter this space for the first time. 

[00:22:15] Stacy Havener: I mean, look, I'm even in the space and when you start rattling off all those vehicle types, my, I start crossing so I can only imagine what the conversations are like and some of these managers are probably like, I don't even know what I like.

[00:22:29] This is a whole different ball game. 

[00:22:33] Nicholas Ablahani: I mean, we have the, the standard set of complex vehicles, BDCs, interval tender offer funds. We deal with REITs and then we're dealing with new product structures that are coming to market. I feel like something new is coming to the market every day. Mm-hmm. And we're talking about 34 ACT registered private funds or 34 act three C seven funds that go after the private wealth channel.

[00:22:57] So it's not exactly a, a retail [00:23:00] vehicle, but it combines different elements of, of the service offering operationally on our side where you now have a, an evergreen structure that you have to do 10 q and 10 K reporting for the way corporate registrants would, would report. So we are definitely on our toes and, and at the ready to, to take on all types of new product structures that, that come our way.

[00:23:24] Stacy Havener: And I would imagine that these clients are like Nick. Help. 

[00:23:30] Nicholas Ablahani: That's exactly, that's exactly when they, they cross my desk. Absolutely. 

[00:23:34] Stacy Havener: Help, help me, Nick, because I don't know what I, I know what I wanna do, but I don't know what I don't know. 

[00:23:41] Nicholas Ablahani: Yeah. And it's so important because if you get into the wrong type of structure, if you don't understand how these vehicles operate, you're just gonna set up your fund for failure.

[00:23:52] Your investors for failure could be a, a disaster all the way around. 

[00:23:56] Stacy Havener: So gimme an example, like, tell me a story. This podcast is all about stories. [00:24:00] Yeah. So tell me a story of a client. Describe them. You don't have to name them, but describe them and sort of the, and give us like the details on the scenario so we can like see this play out.

[00:24:12] Nicholas Ablahani: Yeah, so I'd say I was having a conversation with what was then a prospective client. Now turned current client, large asset, alternative asset manager, primarily in the, the private fund space. Introduced to me and basically said, we're hearing a lot of buzz right now on interval funds, but we haven't launched a registered 40 ACT product before.

[00:24:35] Basically, how can you help? Who do we need to talk to? What items do we have to consider entering the 40 ACT space? Will my investment strategy fit in this type of product structure? How much is it going to cost to operationally launch this fund? And lastly, how quickly can we get this idea off the ground?

[00:24:56] And that stands out to me because that hits on the pain points [00:25:00] that we hear again and again in this space time cost. Product structuring and then the operational and corporate governance infrastructure. 

[00:25:09] Stacy Havener: And so when you say large asset manager, 

[00:25:11] Nicholas Ablahani: so this was a large alternative asset manager running 20 billion in, in a UM, in the private fund space.

[00:25:19] Stacy Havener: And okay, so then now I want you to tell us, so how, what did you do? How did you help them and what did you end up launching together? 

[00:25:26] Nicholas Ablahani: Sure. Yeah. So conversations like that pushed us to, I'd say reimagine what could be done to help advisors solve for these challenges. Could we give managers the benefits of a shared trust model, like a multiple series trust or an MST?

[00:25:43] So that's the, the speed to market, the cost efficiency, the collaboration upfront from a product structuring and legal administration perspective all the way through SEC registration and effect, but all while still staying fully compliant. [00:26:00] Funds need to be set up as their own trust. That's a key differentiation here, where multiple close and funds cannot be set up in the same trust the way a multiple series trust would would work.

[00:26:12] So they have to maintain their own individual trust from a a setup perspective. So that's when we started designing the, the shared service framework that would now create an innovative and cost-effective enhancement to our full line of close and fund services as a, an alternate path to launching interval and tender offer funds.

[00:26:35] Stacy Havener: So this is great, Nick. Great job on that one. I want you to unpack a little bit, like when you say the idea of a series trust mm-hmm. I want you to unpack, like, if somebody's like, I don't even know what that is, I want you to sort of say like, you know, you get shared, legal, shared, you know? Yep. So unpack for me, what is this framework?

[00:26:56] Yes. What are we talking about? 

[00:26:58] Nicholas Ablahani: Sure. Yeah, so, so what does [00:27:00] this framework look like? We call it our Ultima Gateway platform, which provides a turnkey solution with all the servicing infrastructure needed to launch a closed end fund. That includes an independent board of directors. Fund, C fund officers and legal counsel alongside our full suite of closed end fund services.

[00:27:23] There's open architecture providing optionality for auditors, custodians, and valuation agents, and our teams can help coordinate and establish those relationships. As well. Key benefits of the platform include both speed to market and cost efficiencies, so we're able to get these funds set up and effective with the SEC much faster as we're able to save advisors months by eliminating the vendor due diligence and selection process.

[00:27:53] The platform also helps reduce startup and ongoing operational costs. So not only through [00:28:00] shared costs like Board and CCO that shared amongst the funds being set up in this platform, but through the other partnerships like legal counsel that we've established through the platform providing preferential pricing.

[00:28:13] Stacy Havener: So this is fantastic. So now I wanna go back to our $20 billion firm. 

[00:28:18] Nicholas Ablahani: Okay. 

[00:28:18] Stacy Havener: And, and only if we have the end of the story do we have, did they end up launching something? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So let's take it full circle. So they, so now go back to them and say, so then they decided to move forward and here's what we did.

[00:28:32] Nicholas Ablahani: So the large asset manager looked to us to launch their interval fund through our shared service model that we established for interval funds. All the framework, all the infrastructure was set up and ready to go. And we were able to hit on all the key elements that we pitched in, in the thought of setting up this type of, of platform, we got them to market.

[00:28:59] A [00:29:00] five and a half month timeframe, saving them probably about three months in the, the legal registration and launch process. And then we save them both costs, both from a, an operational perspective as well as the, the SEC registration and launch costs. 

[00:29:17] Stacy Havener: Can you gimme like a percentage? Don't, you don't have to do dollars, but like, you like numbers, so you can probably do it in your head, but if you need a minute Yeah.

[00:29:23] Like what will, would you, ballpark percentage savings. Can you do that? 

[00:29:27] Nicholas Ablahani: Yeah. I, I would say in the, in the launch phase savings of probably about 30 to 40% in the legal registration. Launch costs. Costs, and then from an ongoing operational expense perspective, probably savings in the 20 to to 30%. Right. 

[00:29:46] Stacy Havener: Okay.

[00:29:47] Last question for you. Is it live, does it have assets in it? Is that something that we wanna say like, it was a successful launch and they have 500 million in it? I don't know. I'm making it up. 

[00:29:57] Nicholas Ablahani: Yeah, so, so this particular advisor, [00:30:00] it went through SEC registration, it is live with the SEC. To date, they've raised over 200 million in, in assets.

[00:30:09] Which, going back to an earlier point, making sure that clients are thinking about size and seeding strategy, reaching sufficient scale to make sure that these vehicles are not cost prohibitive. Passing a hundred million dollars or so threshold is, is ultimately the number that they wanna hit. So the fund can be considered at scale.

[00:30:31] They're up and running and our ability to hit on all of these key items that we laid out for this platform for the client. It, it leads, I mean, not just to client satisfaction, it leads to referenceable clients for us, and then it leads to client trust that they'll look to us to launch multiple products.

[00:30:52] But, 

[00:30:54] Stacy Havener: okay. Oh, wait, not last question. So now I want you to come back to the actuary. 

[00:30:59] Nicholas Ablahani: Okay. [00:31:00] 

[00:31:00] Stacy Havener: Because you're not an actuary, Nick. Okay. You have a really cool job. I do. Yeah, I do. And so when you think back to what you wanted to be when you grow up, which was very cool, 'cause actuary is cool. Sam set. Like, tell me, tell me what, what, what rhymes.

[00:31:18] Nicholas Ablahani: So, so while I did not ultimately become an actuary, I have a great job in this retail alternative space that is keeping all of us busy here. At Altima, it is a fast growing segment for us. The ability to continue borderline work with numbers, but taking an analytical approach, being tested every day in this space is, is really enjoyable.

[00:31:45] And um, 

[00:31:45] Stacy Havener: I'm very happy 

[00:31:46] Nicholas Ablahani: with where I'm at. i'm at.

[00:31:48] Stacy Havener: So after ETFs and interval funds, what happens when a client needs something that doesn't exist yet? That's where Amanda enters the picture.

[00:31:59] When you were a [00:32:00] kid, what did you wanna be when you grew up? Oh gosh. Certainly not in the financial services industry. 

[00:32:07] Amanda Houston: I don't know. I think maybe teacher, doctor, what? Whatever the, okay. Alright. 

[00:32:13] Stacy Havener: So if you wanted to be a teacher or a doctor now I want you to think about what you do now. Those are very helping professions, by the way. It's true and isn't it? And so when you think about that helping profession, like how does that apply to what you're doing now? Does it like there's some threads there for me, 

[00:32:30] Amanda Houston: Yeah. I mean, I, I certainly feel like I've found myself in this very niche space within financial services and, and I, have to say that educating people within Ultimas or even outside of Ultimas about private credit has, yeah, it's kind of fun. It's, I, I enjoy it and it's, it's something that I still consider myself to be learning it every day.

[00:32:56] I mean, there's always something new and different, and I think that [00:33:00] translates back to. You know that, that teaching mentality of it. Totally. 

[00:33:05] Stacy Havener: Yeah. Do you feel like when you talk about like people's, you know, private credit being a little bit more difficult to understand, take in, make tangible, like is it because it's so esoteric or what like because it is, it's sometimes it's real.

[00:33:21] I mean, I've been in this industry for a really long time and Yeah, to your point, like it's like, okay, so yeah, private credit. Wow. The hottest thing happening. Where's that been? Like for the 20 years of my career? What are the challenges they have with it? The 

[00:33:35] Amanda Houston: complexity, we talk about different investment types and, and you think about a very simple equity investment or fixed income investment.

[00:33:46] There's math associated with it and Right. It's easy for us to, to talk about operationally, but when you get into private credit, there's lots of. Underlying differentiators [00:34:00] to being able to calculate and track a loan appropriately. It's more complex. And I think a lot of people who get into financial services, especially on the operations side of things, they start with an equity and then you add a loan on top of it and it's much more difficult.

[00:34:18] It, it takes more time and effort to be an expert in private credit, and not everybody gets to that point in their career. I, I think that it's, it's definitely fun to, to talk about private credit, but you know, you have to be willing to get into the weeds of it. I've gotta look at, yeah. Credit agreements, I have to be able to understand the terms of the agreements and be able to translate that into an accounting platform.

[00:34:45] And I think a lot of times people aren't willing to put that kind of effort into it. 

[00:34:49] Stacy Havener: Such a great point. And also super relevant, even just given like the news that's going on right now and these like massive issues that are happening in some of these [00:35:00] private credit platforms, which speaks so much to what you're talking about, the importance of the operational behind the scenes, the contracts, the translation to accounting, or else you know, billions of dollars apparently evaporate.

[00:35:12] So I think you are in an incredible seat. Having that insight of private credit's. Great. It's awesome that everyone wants access to this asset class, but we gotta make sure our i's are dotted and our T's are crossed. And that's not necessarily as easy a lift. For you at Ultimas on that side and also for the managers to really understand like, okay, what's gonna go into this fund if we're gonna set this thing up?

[00:35:41] A lot of nuance. And that's actually what I wanna talk about today. So I want you to tell me a story about a client that you've helped recently. And I wanna start with, I want you to paint the picture of the client. We're gonna talk about a client who had a problem. They came to you, [00:36:00] you Ultimas were able to solve this problem for them.

[00:36:03] They emerged, changed, right? That's like a classic story arc. So first I want you to set the table for us on like, describe the client. You don't have to name them, but just like, you know, had they been in private credit forever, was this their first time? Like what size are they? Like, kind of paint the picture of the client.

[00:36:21] We're gonna talk about who's the hero of the story. 

[00:36:23] Amanda Houston: So I think that I, I take a step back a couple of years and I, I'd like to. Ference one of our clients on our registered business line. Okay, great. And you know, the client has 15 plus funds with us and they've got, you know, 1.1 billion in aum. They're a pretty sizable client on our ultimate registered business line.

[00:36:48] And they came to us and they said, we've got these registered alternative products and we've got private credit and we've got some syndicated debt in them. Are you able to handle [00:37:00] them? 

[00:37:00] Stacy Havener: Mm-hmm. 

[00:37:00] Amanda Houston: And our registered team was very capable. They were able to build processes, operational workflows. They were able to manage the client's expectations really well.

[00:37:13] Mm-hmm. But then the client brought to our attention that they also had private funds. And these private funds had private credit in them. And at the time, a number of years ago, Ultimas didn't have a solution to handle private credit. Our business line, and so we had to start the evaluation process and we needed to figure out a way to solve for this Yeah.

[00:37:40] Client or risk losing the client, and that that's really, you know, it it, it started the spark to, to build out a process on our private side of the business. 

[00:37:53] Stacy Havener: Just unpack for us a little bit, the fact that the private credit was in a private fund. What was the complexity [00:38:00] that that created that was different than the registered side?

[00:38:03] Amanda Houston: I think the, the complexity that comes into play is the teams that are managing a registered product who might have daily reporting requirements or a private product that has monthly, quarterly deliverables on the operation side. Has different accounting expertise needed. Not to mention the fact that the, the systems and the technology that are working behind the scenes are totally different.

[00:38:30] And so the private fund needed a different set of eyes looking at the requirements and the asks compared to what the registered products were were doing or the people that were managing them. 

[00:38:44] Stacy Havener: Got it. So the client has these funds and I wanna talk about their pain. I wanna talk about their pain points.

[00:38:53] Yeah. What were those pain points like? Besides the fact that they just want, you know, one partner to consolidate all [00:39:00] of like manage all the funds, that makes total sense. But what else was painful for them with who was doing the behind the scenes on those private funds? What were the pain points? 

[00:39:10] Amanda Houston: There's always a nuance to a syndicated loan or a private credit deal, right?

[00:39:16] You have to be able to. Do the calculations for the underlying loans. You need to ensure that you've got the appropriate documentation and backup for all of the activities you're processing. And our registered team was able to do all of those things and manage all of that workflow and help and escalate and raise discrepancies back to the client And 

[00:39:42] Stacy Havener: mm-hmm.

[00:39:43] Amanda Houston: I think that the client was hoping for that same type of handholding, that boutique approach in managing their operations process on the private side for their private funds as well, which is really why they came to us to help [00:40:00] build out that process for these private credit funds. 

[00:40:03] Stacy Havener: And because. Gimme like the counterpoint to that because if you were at a big shop, you wouldn't necessarily like handholding and big shop just don't even like, those things don't compute.

[00:40:15] Is that part of it? Like tell me more about like about that. 

[00:40:18] Amanda Houston: Absolutely. So knowing that we didn't have a, a fully built solution on our private side, private, we were able to bring in the flexibility into our build out when they asked us to help. So we spent the past few years deciding how to add automation, how to close the gaps on manual transaction processing.

[00:40:43] We worked on, you know, the, the pros and cons list of do we outsource and have a shop help us with all of these private credit. Details or do we build this ourselves and do we have [00:41:00] full ownership of the processes and workflows in place? And ultimately, with this client's help, we were able to decide that we wanted to use technology, we wanted to leverage existing relationships we had in place. And so we were really able to develop these processes and workflows alongside this client to build our product as well. And the best part about all of it is it's translatable, right?

[00:41:27] It's, it's something that I don't have to just use for this one client. I can build out what needs to be used across all of Ultima's private clients and future clients. And you know, we can build it with flexibility to scale the offering that we have for our clients. 

[00:41:45] Stacy Havener: I love this so much because in my opinion, and this isn't just a finance thing, but just like a business thing, when you build something for a client with a client that whatever you're building is gonna be [00:42:00] so much.

[00:42:01] Better. I'm using quotes because I don't love that word, but it's gonna be so much better, more aligned to what they need than if you were sitting in an ivory tower sort of imagining what the needs would be. Right? Like they are there almost as a partner in the build out of this. That's basically what you're describing.

[00:42:20] I think that's fantastic. 

[00:42:21] Amanda Houston: As you can imagine, the private credit space continues to evolve, right? Yeah. It's, it's not something that's stopping anytime soon. And having a partner like this client alongside for the ride is really allowing us to be flexible and nimble and, and make sure that what we're developing today is, is going to be able to change and evolve tomorrow with whatever happens in that private credit space.

[00:42:50] But they're also allowed to give us input and, and, and provide, you know, guidance where, where needed. 

[00:42:57] Stacy Havener: So I love that you talked about the data [00:43:00] feeds and how you were able to build this custom, you know, with a client right by your side saying, you know, this is what I need, this is what's gonna be most helpful to me.

[00:43:07] I want to come back to their original problem for a minute. Because what they had said was part of it. We want this same level of boutique approach. We want the same level of handholding, but then we also realize we need some like big company type of technology, automation, data processing, et cetera. Talk to me about that boutique thing, and I imagine you were talking with this client all the time as you were creating this.

[00:43:36] Like how did you maintain that handhold experience that Ultimas is really known for? I 

[00:43:42] Amanda Houston: think that we were already in constant communication. Private credit requires you to do your due diligence and make sure that you are understanding the, the calculations behind what the systems are doing. And so when we decided to automate [00:44:00] this and build the technologies, we still had our, our previous workflow, our manual process, and we were able to do the validations and ensure that what we were building and what we were automating and the technology where we were layering in, was doing what it expected.

[00:44:18] And we were able to showcase that back to the client, right? We were able to, to share the reconciliations, we were able to provide the reporting and, and do the verification process alongside the client. 

[00:44:31] Stacy Havener: I wanna try something here. I love this. One of the things we talked about a ton when we were together in Newport is.

[00:44:40] This idea of how much people hate phone trees. Okay. And like, getting in a queue and being told to like, push one, push you know, eight, you know, say your name. Do you wanna call? Like, all of that bullshit. Okay. Yeah. And how, how Ultima is like the anti that, so if it's [00:45:00] true, I would love for you to say, like, to talk about the fact that all of that automation and all of that scale and all of that data, that client can still pick up a telephone with a cord even and dial a phone number.

[00:45:15] And guess who answers it, Amanda or anyone on the team. Like, I wanna kind of talk about that. So tell me about sort of, I guess it's like the client experience. Like if they need you, truly 

[00:45:26] Amanda Houston: all they have to do is pick up the phone. I, I, Stacy I don't, I don't wanna lead anybody on here, but we are here and, and we're, we're in the weeds of it.

[00:45:37] And, and that's what I think makes us. So special is that, you know, I'm working alongside the accountants every day and if the accountant has a question or the client is reaching out to the, the accounting team, I'm right here alongside them and, and I can explain everything that's happening behind the scenes and I can even show 'em if they [00:46:00] want, if they, if they wanna get into the details, I'm happy to, to show them everything that we've done and everything that we've built along the way.

[00:46:08] Stacy Havener: So now when you think about this journey with this client of building this kind of newer side of the business mm-hmm. Is there some sort of proof point or receipt we wanna work in here that says, now our private fund private credit is however you word that serves X clients or X billions or how, how, whatever, whatever that language is, do you wanna do one of those?

[00:46:34] Amanda Houston: Yeah. Yeah. So I think that. The client that we've kind of talked through the process here has really given us the ability to add automation in a place that was very manual. And now we've got, you know, a handful of clients that are using this automated workflow on our private side of the business today.

[00:46:56] And, you know, we've got a couple of billion dollars [00:47:00] worth of a UM under our belt on the private side, and we're continuing to grow it as every day. I think that we're, we're still in our early stages. We, we do hope to see this continue to grow, but that's the, the beauty of it being so flexible and, and operationally, you know, ready to take on the next challenge is what I would say.

[00:47:23] Love 

[00:47:23] Stacy Havener: that. Okay. And then how about, how about also something around like, if I put myself in the client's shoes, the fact that they can have everything under one umbrella. Still get the boutique feel, still get like the big infrastructure they need, but they're able to just kind of put all of this together with one team, which is ultimas, like that kind of vibe.

[00:47:52] You wanna talk about that? 'cause that client had other, has other stuff with you. So I would imagine like their other option was go find someone. So you'd have [00:48:00] some stuff with Ultimas and some stuff with some other firm and what a name is that? 

[00:48:03] Amanda Houston: Right? Well, and and we're seeing that a lot right now. So we've got a lot of big names on our registered business line and I think a lot of times they, they were maybe a little bit afraid to give us some of their private business as well.

[00:48:18] And the beauty of expanding this private credit automation into our private business line is that our clients don't have to seek help with the admins of the world. That. Focus on private only. They can really keep all of their business together with Ultimas and they can have registered products and they can have private products Right alongside it.

[00:48:43] Stacy Havener: Now reflect back on the teaching, the helping, the serving. Like, tell me more. 

[00:48:49] Amanda Houston: Yeah, I mean, I, I guess you could say that, that I'm kind of doing all of that right now. I'm helping our clients and teaching them the operational [00:49:00] ways of automation and how Tima can really add benefit to them, take the burden of due diligence and all of these operational nuances off of their plate.

[00:49:12] And even though, uh, I'm not a teacher by trade, uh, these financial services topics and private credit are really, really allowing me to showcase these 

[00:49:23] Stacy Havener: teaching moments.

[00:49:25] 

[00:49:25] 

[00:49:26] Stacy Havener: my name is Paul 

[00:49:27] Paul Wahmann: Wayman. I am head of our middle office. Services division at Ultima Fund Solutions. 

[00:49:32] Stacy Havener: Okay. Paul, my first question for you, what did you wanna be when you grew up? 

[00:49:36] Paul Wahmann: Not in financial services. What did you wanna be? My, I grew up out in central Pennsylvania. Wanted to work for the park service, be outdoors, I hike, I ski, I climb.

[00:49:50] I spent 15 years out in Colorado, so financial services wasn't the right match for me originally. 

[00:49:59] Stacy Havener: [00:50:00] Okay. Amazing. So we're gonna come back to this. I don't even know how we're gonna pull this thread, Paul, but we are going to, how you go from wanting to be in park services and how that shows up now, that's gonna be kind of what we come back to at the end.

[00:50:15] We're gonna see what threads we find and what little gems we uncover as we go. Okay, so you explained a little bit about middle office, the land of misfit toys, which we say with peace and love 'cause we love misfit toys. I want you to, before we even get to the client story, give us an example of one, of like a typical process that would be this misfit toy.

[00:50:35] Paul Wahmann: Yep. Certainly. So, as I mentioned earlier, generally asset managers, you know, their focus is on portfolio strategy. That's how they make their money. They try to outsource as much as they can, but there's so many operational activities that need to get from A to B. It's one thing about having quality returns, et cetera, on the strategies and the [00:51:00] portfolios, but being able to execute trades at an efficient price point.

[00:51:06] Being able to calculate performance, you know, being able to, particularly now with regulatory change. A great example is the US recently went to t plus one settlement, or trade date plus one settle. Last year, many other markets are soon to follow. For those of us who have been around a while, it used to be T plus five, and you used to have five days to settle the trade.

[00:51:27] Now you have hours. Yeah. And again, that goes back to the land of misfit toys where no one's really planned on how to be able to do that. They could run a manually intensive environment. It's like, oh, that's fine. We have five days now. They don't. They have literally hours. And you think about global asset managers, maybe they have trading desks in APAC or emea.

[00:51:51] It's like, oh I, you know, I have to have it done before I go home at night. Or in the US we have markets where we have clients trading you in Hong Kong, [00:52:00] India with very tight settlement windows and it's 7:00 AM Eastern time in the morning. If you've missed a trade, you're already failing. Or in a buy-in situation, or most importantly, it's gonna cost you money.

[00:52:13] So it really trying to figure out how to get automation around that. And in particular, so you look at Ultimas. Our history fund administration business. I've been with the firm for four years now. I came from one of the large custodian banks where I used to run operations for them. Being able to support like our client base, we are calling it our mid, but growing tier of asset managers, needing help, needing scale, needing to find efficiencies and advisors and partners, you know, versus just a vendor type relationship.

[00:52:49] Now, I don't wanna bash. Competitors or custodian banks, but you're just a name to many of them, and it's all really based upon your asset size. When I joined Ultimas, [00:53:00] we live and breathe that client service first mandate, and everyone says it, but Ultimas, even as we've been growing rapidly over the last few years, that has always been top of the house.

[00:53:11] I know you know Gary Taman very well. He drives that mindset into everything that we do. And the nice thing is we're doing much more than just saying it and we can prove it. I mean, we have a lot of client examples. You know, a great example is from my past life, every time we'd have an op, a big opportunity for a win, we'd be hunting around for who can we use as a reference.

[00:53:36] Ah yeah. And while middle office is a growing product within the range of services offered by Altimas, everyone on my list is a reference. Clients who have been on board with us. For three months usually you always say, let's get through the first year and then we'll start asking for favors. At Ultimas, we can literally go right out of the gate.

[00:53:57] A great example [00:54:00] is we have a client, it started as a middle office only opportunity back in 2005. They had already outsourced all of their trade settlement lifecycle work. Their prior client, or sorry, their prior provider, had decided to get out of the business and basically gave them three months. To exit or bring back in-house and they had no operating model.

[00:54:23] We were able to take that business on, scale it, onboard it, bring it up to speed, and again, a new name to Ultima. So they didn't even know who we were. They had never had a relationship with Ultimas before. Certainly if I was on the asset manager side, I would be concerned, who are they? You know, can I get references, you know, et cetera.

[00:54:42] 'cause they just didn't know our brand or what we do. We onboarded them on time. We provided value in just showing, because they trade a lot of global equities, global markets. So when it comes to like learning how to become more efficient with t plus one settlement, things of that nature, we were [00:55:00] able to advise them more so than just handling the speed of transition, but making the.

[00:55:06] Model better and soon after going live with them, basically, I wish I was on the sales side at Altus because it was an easy commission for 'em. They received a call out of the blue, basically giving us all of their US fund servicing on top of it, you know, which then became a relatively small middle office client.

[00:55:27] Great to have a good name, but then rapidly became one of our top 20. Because of adding in the additional services for fund administration. Yeah. And like I said, they gave us that call three months after we went live with Wow. Middle office component of it. So it just demonstrates not only speed of delivery, but being a trusted partner.

[00:55:52] Stacy Havener: Mm-hmm. And 

[00:55:53] Paul Wahmann: I think that's important. That goes back to the, you know, what I had said earlier about advising [00:56:00] not being a vendor and you know, we treat our clients like a partner and expect it the same from them, and we're seeing the benefit from that. 

[00:56:07] Stacy Havener: That's a great story. Perfect. Great job. I mean, you nailed it.

[00:56:10] Paul Wahmann: Yep. Certainly. And this was a global equity strategy asset manager based in the us but with global funds with 23 billion in assets under manage. 

[00:56:20] Stacy Havener: Perfect. Great. Okay. That was a fantastic story. Do you wanna tell another one? 

[00:56:26] Paul Wahmann: Yes, certainly. I, 

[00:56:27] Stacy Havener: yeah. Okay. 

[00:56:28] Paul Wahmann: I have a bunch of them. So another asset manager that we onboarded in 2025 was another new name to Ultima, a 5 billion US based asset manager that did all of their operations in-house.

[00:56:44] And they supported many different types of global products. So US registered vehicles, they had private funds, they had separately managed accounts, and they had Irish domicile global funds. Oh, or uses as well. Yeah. And just needed to package [00:57:00] everything together. So it was a combination of back office being provided by a number of different service providers.

[00:57:07] Not that any of them were poor or of the highest quality, it's just a large number that you need to manage and provide oversight. And in an internal model, which was very legacy tech. Heavy. So there would be needs to either upgrade or transition staffing. Yeah. I would say overall in financial services, it's harder to retain and find staff to manage growth, particularly if you're not located in one of the money service centers and they just need efficiencies around that.

[00:57:39] So new client to Ultimas and we were able to provide them, we call it our enterprise model and it's not, certainly not a uh, brand for us, but the ability to weave in support in all of those aspects. So seeing the growth. As you've seen through Ultimas from traditional registered forti act fund service [00:58:00] provider and administration provider, to now we're in the private space, we're in middle office, and we've really evolved our middle office business to compliment other services.

[00:58:10] So if you have a fund services client that, oh, we have some separately managed accounts, what can you do for us there? And the specific nuances around it? Well, we need trading. So with this more recent client, what we were able to do is offer a full level of support there for them. So we provide their global investment book of record, or IBOR across all their US and global products, full trade management across the board where we link directly into the order management and trading platforms.

[00:58:41] And then on the private side, we offer all of the partnership accounting and things of that nature. Right outta the gate, everyone thought going in. Certainly we can do it in a way to achieve cost savings from technology costs, headcount costs, et cetera, but everyone [00:59:00] thinks normally, oh, the efficiency gains, you know, and what's learned through that.

[00:59:04] Yeah, that might be an intangible. You might see some things indirectly as a result, but not really why people are doing these deals. However, right outta the gate, I'll give an example around trade settlement workflow, they had a model in place where when they're doing trade matching instructions, they had people that would just have to, whenever there was a mismatch, they just have to deal with force matching trades and just fixing it.

[00:59:30] On a one off just to get the trade to settle versus looking at the root cause of the issue. With our expertise in global trading, we were able to make some suggestions. Hey, if you change, let's say market fee tables or commission tables in your order management system, or update settlement information, all critical data points for the settlement life cycle, then you don't need to have heads, whether it be our people or yours, to be able to push these things through every day.

[00:59:59] [01:00:00] And we were able to get their straight through rate for matching and instruction on a trade date basis up to 98%. And where I was hovering around 90. And again, that was something we always believed. Yeah, that's, we knew we could do it, but without seeing tangible results. Now through the metrics that we provide them, they're seeing the number of trade exceptions dramatically decrease.

[01:00:23] This is their traders. They've got better things to be doing. You in helping us push through trades. Uh, so now they can focus on, you know, their value add components to the investment strategy. 

[01:00:35] Stacy Havener: Paul, great stories. Fantastic. Okay, so the only thing left for us is to come back to the fact that when you were growing up, you wanted to be in Park Services.

[01:00:46] Now we're not gonna be able to get the thread on the outside bit, but let's really think about what are, like when you think about Park, like what are they doing and park services, what are they actually like? What is that job? 

[01:00:59] Paul Wahmann: You know, when I [01:01:00] thought about it a little bit more, and first of all, yeah, the reason I didn't go down that career path was I needed to make money.

[01:01:08] Stacy Havener: Yeah, that's unfortunate. I was, that was a 

[01:01:09] Paul Wahmann: strong work ethic to learn a trade. And, you know, I just, it ended up pointing me in that direction. I also love to travel and I thought, you know, being able to travel to do the outdoors world was great, but getting into financial services, and I've been in the service industry now for 30 plus years.

[01:01:28] I've had the opportunity to live overseas in multiple markets. I've had the ability to travel the world and learn, and eventually coming full circle. Uh, I grew up. In Pennsylvania through an acquisition that my firm had done. I ended up in Denver, Colorado for 15 years, and there's my outdoor space. You know, I was able to go capture my hiking, my skiing, my outdoor things as a result of that, and I guess said being in the financial services industry, especially [01:02:00] over the past few decades, when you think about everything that we have gone through year 2000 conversion to the Euro currency, many ups and downs in the market with tech bubbles, mortgage bubbles, et cetera, and changing regulatory.

[01:02:15] As I mentioned, you know, just seeing global sentiment go from five plus days to settle down to, you know, trade date to t plus one. So much change is happening. So much of it operationally as well as seeing the new products coming out, new asset types, new products, new fund types, et cetera. You know, it's really been, uh, great to be able to see that, you know, and like I said, being able to pair that with my ability to still be outside, you know, do the fun things that I like, you know, it's, it's 

[01:02:44] Stacy Havener: just formed a great career path for me.

[01:02:47] Finally, if Paul keeps the machine running, Corinne shows us how Ultimas elevates the entire experience, especially when everyone else [01:03:00] says no.

[01:03:01] 

[01:03:02] Stacy Havener: I'm Corinne 

[01:03:02] Corinne Weidner: Weidner, a managing director of the Private Equity Operations Group at Ultima Fund Solutions. Perfect. 

[01:03:10] Stacy Havener: Okay, so we're checking things off. Off the list. Right. All right. Corinne, tell us about like what are the problems that clients who call you, they're like, Corinne, I need help. What are they talking about?

[01:03:22] What are the problems they're having? 

[01:03:23] Corinne Weidner: Well, the problems that people come to me for are for solutions when it comes to data. Every client right now, or I think everyone in the industry is trying to figure out how do you get data, more data, big data, quicker? And in many of them wanna do it in their systems, but they know that we're typically the books and records of that system.

[01:03:46] So how do we get that information? They know we have that information, but how can they, one, get it and two, utilize it best to get to their investors? And what type of data are you talking about here? Fund data, GL [01:04:00] data, accounting data, which in turn, many clients do automatically think that that means metrics or KPIs of some sort, which we are constantly trying to deliver or customize solutions for.

[01:04:16] Because typically we're an accounting shop, so our typically, we we're doing historical information in and historical information out, but we do try to come up with creative solutions as to how we can use that historical data to give them the tools that they need to come up with those metrics, those KPIs.

[01:04:34] Stacy Havener: And what do they wanna do with that information? What are they doing with, they want the KPIs and those metrics. Why? 

[01:04:41] Corinne Weidner: Because that's what their investors expect of them. So they want real time information into how their investments are performing. So whether that's their own just investment in the fund, they wanna know, Hey, what's my IRR?

[01:04:58] What's my moic? What's all [01:05:00] these different metrics? Or if they are a fund of funds or a fund of one, an access fund, they wanna know how that underlying fund is doing. They're like, okay, I can see up here, but I wanna see how that underlying fund is so I can compare it. Most of these. Or investors or larger institutions have multiple funds across, or investments across many different platforms.

[01:05:22] So they wanna be able to determine who's doing well, where do I wanna invest more in? Who do I wanna bet on in the future and put my money into? So they just wanna get that information as real time as possible. Everybody wants information, news, data, whatever we can get. Now 

[01:05:39] Stacy Havener: this is fascinating. So also it kind of sounds like it's almost an allocator solution, what you're describing.

[01:05:45] Is that fair to say? Like, because you're saying and, and this is just me asking the question. Yeah. So I can know, is it an actual asset manager or is it like somebody who's allocating to a bunch of different funds and to your point is trying to [01:06:00] understand. Okay. I'm allocating to all these things, which makes sense for a fund of funds.

[01:06:04] Mm-hmm. But is it also large institutions that are just making a ton of private equity investments? That, that you're then okay. 

[01:06:10] Corinne Weidner: It's both. It's both. And they, I mean, we might just be one and like the fund that we're administering may just be one of hundreds of investments that these institutions have, but they want to be able to come up with an apples to apples.

[01:06:25] Comparison of how these different strategies are doing. So they wanna compare if I go all in in PE or do I wanna be in an open-ended, or do I wanna be vc, do I wanna go into credit? And so they have their own ways of evaluating that, but they just need access to that data. And administrators aren't gonna necessarily open up their entire systems to these folks.

[01:06:50] But so that's where the, the balance is with our clients and that's what their balance is as well with any of their investors and their clients is. [01:07:00] How much information do we give? What information do we give and how do we deliver that information? 

[01:07:06] Stacy Havener: And so how do you help them think that through? Or what have you come up with as a team to solve this issue?

[01:07:13] Corinne Weidner: So our philosophy and what we've been able to, to describe to our clients, to prospects, to COIs in the industry is basically if we have the data in our system, then we have the ability to report on it. So we need ways to, we need to understand what are your end goals, your reporting goals, to make sure that we're actually taking in that information on our end.

[01:07:42] So we tend to over. Ingest, I would say, or tag or make sure that we're delineating enough so that in the future we have the ability to pull that data out and we don't have to do a back fill of a process, et cetera, because that can be [01:08:00] a headache and a headache to the client as well, and not get them the information that they need soon enough.

[01:08:06] So this 

[01:08:07] Stacy Havener: is great. So bring this to life with an example of a, of a client that you've helped with this exact problem. 

[01:08:13] Corinne Weidner: I'll bring, uh, one example of a client, but I it, like I'm saying, it's actually been repeatable. It's something that now we've used for other clients that are similar and structure, but then we've also applied the same thought process or approach to clients that aren't even, aren't similar.

[01:08:30] Mm. So this was a while ago, and one of the things that differentiated us when we had just come over to Ultima site started in a smaller boutique fund group that Tima. Saw the benefit of it brought us on was that we were smaller fish in a big pond of large administrators. And so this client, this client was fast mo moving technology forward.

[01:08:54] They were coming out with what they felt was groundbreaking and what I would believe is [01:09:00] groundbreaking type of technology to be able to deliver institutional type service to retail investors. So inve, most large funds and investments are only available to institutional investors, but they want a, a retail investor to be able to have access to.

[01:09:17] And so that's where, when I'm talking about fund to funds or fund of ones, they create this fund that sits on top of these larger funds and they're able to make those bigger institutional commitments, but at smaller commitments. For you and me. So they come to us. We're just a smaller administrator.

[01:09:33] They're like, Hey, we really wanna create this technology platform where investors, clients can come on. We know you probably can't do this 'cause everybody tells us no, but this is kind of information we need from you. That's really the difference, is that large administrators either come out and say, you get what you get and you don't get upset.

[01:09:53] And so it's like, okay, you need this information. I have these five reports. I'll send them [01:10:00] over to you and you do what you need to do with it. We try not to lead ever with no, we lead forward with what is your end goal? What are you trying to accomplish? And let's talk through it. And so essentially how we were walking through it is they were sitting there going, okay, we need this data point.

[01:10:19] We need this data point. We need this data point. I remember being in their offices and we had a whiteboard and they had a guy who said he has a wiki, which I thought, I was like, I thought that was great. He had a whole wiki as to how we get this data. And so we're walking through it and like we're still going in a couple hours ago by, and they're like, you haven't said no yet.

[01:10:39] And we said, no, we don't really have the option to say no, we're we're just trying to figure out do you, what kind of format do you want it in? Do you want it in CSV or do you want it in Excel or do you want what kind of date structure? And from that point on, it just evolved. We were brought on because of their own acquisition of a back book.

[01:10:58] But from that point on, [01:11:00] about a month later after this, they made us one of their preferred providers for all their ongoing admin services. So, and what that is, is because we were able to take our data and we had to get creative, and I, I wanna make sure this is, this is not solely on me at that time. If you had known me five years ago, I was not as tech.

[01:11:21] I mean, I was really great with apps. I can, I can get you Instacart, whatever you need. But as it comes to data, that wasn't really where I thought I would be five years from then. But today, I sit there and someone, so when I apply this to other platform or large platform or other types of clients, someone once said to me, they're like, Ryn, you could just see your brain working.

[01:11:44] So I sit there and like people will be talking and I'm like this. And I, and they know in my head, I'm sitting there going, okay, well we have that data point there. We have that. I know we pulled this data point and we put it into that report and remember it over here was able to connect these, this [01:12:00] pipeline and that's how we got it to them.

[01:12:02] And so it can be dangerous enough in the conversation to be able to give the confidence that we've done this before. It might not look exactly the same that we've done it in the past, but I know we have all of the resources behind the scenes to be able to get this data in the format that they need and get it across to get to their angle.

[01:12:23] Stacy Havener: So great. And what I, I absolutely love the whole angle. This is me, whatever riffing. I love the whole angle of like the other big fund admins start with No. And we never wanna start a conversation with No, I think that is so great. That's what clients want. They want you to see them, they want you to see them and hear them out and.

[01:12:47] Create something that feels bespoke. Even if in your head you're like, oh, I know we do something similar over here, and I can basically take that and twist it just a little bit and give them something that they're looking for. That's [01:13:00] what people want. They want something custom for them. You 

[01:13:03] Corinne Weidner: mentioned earlier like who, what's your favorite client?

[01:13:06] And honestly, I love when people come to us and either say, this is what we're not getting today, or mm-hmm this is where, where we're struggling with versus, I mean, these are great clients too, don't get me wrong. But if they come and say, you know what, you give us your standard and that's what we want.

[01:13:24] And while we can do that, because we do have access to so many different engagements, the ones that really excite me and the ones that really show off our more kind of boutique feel are the ones where they say, we want it to look like this, and no one's been able to get it to look like this, that we're like, let's go for it.

[01:13:44] Let's do it. Bring it. So, and we're able to typically deliver on that though, as best we can. We do try to always have a creative solution. 

[01:13:54] Stacy Havener: So right there, I saw the Eagles cheerleader.[01:14:00] 

[01:14:01] Corinne Weidner: I did. I did. I'll tell you, I was an auditor in my day and people used to tell me like, how are you an accountant? Because I'm a very excitable person, 

[01:14:12] Stacy Havener: so I think But you're cheering. You're cheering for the client to ask for what they want. Yeah. No, absolutely. 

[01:14:19] Corinne Weidner: Yeah. I want, I mean, they deserve it and they, everybody's under a lot of pressure in this industry, and I know when we have a client that comes to us.

[01:14:28] It's either stressed or frustrated or, or asking us for something, it's because they have pressure behind the scenes. It's never just, it's never them just who they are. It's because they're, they have the same type of, of deadlines that we have and professional pressures and personal pressures and it's all comes to head of course.

[01:14:49] So we really do try to approach every relationship that way. And that was another thing when you mentioned what, what's your perfect client? It's one that's in partnership. [01:15:00] And so, and I know that's a cliche word, but the partnership aspect of it is just, okay, we know where you're trying to go. Here's what we know to we can do today.

[01:15:12] Let's like continue to iterate on this together. And as long as no one has unrealistic expectations of, if we say, today we don't have that, but we'll do X, Y, and Z to get that tomorrow. And as long as you're along for the ride and you understand that aspect of it, and we agree to those expectations, that's the perfect relationship and partnership and that's where we're gonna be the most successful.

[01:15:36] So good. Typically Ultima's client base is anywhere from middle market private equity to large institution technology firms, multi-billion dollars in a UM. We also have open-ended credit structures, venture capital, et cetera, as well as a separate arm on the registered side. 

[01:15:57] Stacy Havener: Okay. Now last we get to go back [01:16:00] to what you wanted to be when you grew up and how that shows up now, think about what a cheerleader, not just that it's fun and you, get to be at a football game, but like what is their actual role? Why 

[01:16:12] Corinne Weidner: are they there? From the Eagles cheerleader perspective, I think, and this might be cliche or it might be pushing it, but I am my team's biggest supporter and a cheerleader really is part of a team.

[01:16:24] But you get a little bit of show, you get to be in the front and you get, I don't like to be in the center of attention, but I don't mind being in front in business development or in front of a client or in front of my team. And I just think being that advocate for the football team, my favorite football team, and wearing their green in this case, but ultimate Blue, I do try to represent that in a lot of ways.

[01:16:52] So, perfect. Now how about the CEO one? For to be a CEO? I always wanted to be [01:17:00] successful and to me, success. I looked like a large role at an organization, but I didn't wanna have a, big role at an organization that I wasn't passionate for. So like I have to believe in what I am supporting.

[01:17:17] I'm not a very good liar. Uh, I don't have a good game face. People tell me they'd play poker with me at any time. So I really need to believe in what I am. Saying and what I'm supporting. So Eminem, Mars was my m and MSS were my favorite candy. Whether or not they were the milk chocolate or the one with the peanut in the middle all were my favorite at different points.

[01:17:37] So I think that could be it. And I loved the city of Atlanta, even though I never moved to Atlanta. I thought I was a southern girl, but I stayed north. Yeah. 

[01:17:45] Stacy Havener: Well, and also talk to me about the fun bit, because like when you think of like a candy company, especially when you're young, it's like, that must be a really fun place to work.

[01:17:55] Yeah, 

[01:17:56] Corinne Weidner: yeah, right. Absolutely. It's gotta be a fun place. I mean, you cannot. [01:18:00] Chocolate all day long and you get to decide what the marketing looks like. They have really great commercials, m and m. So there's the creative, I grew up as a crafty person, but for some reason I'm a math brain. And so maybe that's actually how it goes into the data is that I have this math brain, but I try to always be creative and I have this creative aspect where my mind is constantly innovating.

[01:18:26] So maybe that's where my M&m bars creative aspect of it wanted to grow. And you can eat m and ms whenever you want. Yeah. I mean, not great for the waistline, but I absolutely, my, my mouth will welcome it at any time. 

[01:18:41] Stacy Havener: So 

[01:18:42] Corinne Weidner: Corrine, you are 

[01:18:43] Stacy Havener: awesome. Well, thanks. Thank you for this.

[01:18:45] Across every story today, there's a clear thread. These teams don't just solve problems. They walk into complexity alongside their clients and build what doesn't exist yet, whether it's private [01:19:00] credit. Retail alternatives, data innovation, or the middle office puzzle, Ultimas shows up with a simple promise.

[01:19:09] You don't have to figure this out alone. And in an industry where the stakes are high and the margin for error is thin, that kind of partnership isn't just helpful. It's often make or break Ultimas. You are an incredible partner to so many fund managers around the world, and you are an incredible partner to us.

[01:19:32] Thank you so much for your commitment and for giving us the opportunity to share the stories of the people that make you special. 

[01:19:42] This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. The information is not an offer, solicitation, or recommendation of any of the funds, services, or products, or to adopt any investment strategy. Investment values may fluctuate and past [01:20:00] performance is not a guide to future performance.

[01:20:02] All opinions expressed by guests on the show are solely their own opinion and do not necessarily reflect those at their firm. Manager's appearance on the show does not constitute an endorsement by Stacey Haner or Haner Capital Partners.

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