TOTO: The transfer window

Speaker A: Foreign. Hello and welcome back to Top of the Ops, a, uh, podcast brought to you by the Drawdown. My name is John Whittaker. I'm the editor at the Drawdown and your host for this pod. In each episode of Toto, we take a closer look at a hot topic in private markets. And in today's episode, we'll be taking a closer look at, uh, the challenges of transferring from one fund administrator to another. Once again, our conversation is sponsored by the good people of HSBC Innovation Banking. From mid market private equity to venture capital innovation needs different. Our episode partner, HSBC Innovation Banking, offers tailored financing, foreign exchange and banking solutions to match evolving needs. Backed by deep sector expertise and global reach, its strategic fund solutions team, uh, are here to help UK clients achieve their financial goals. Discover more at, uh, hsbcinnovationbanking.com as always, I'm joined today by the Mitchell Stark and Scotty Bolland of private markets journalism. Tania Kushal and Matthias Plotz, reporter and deputy editor at the Drawdown, respectively. How are you guys doing?

Speaker B: Pretty well. Thanks, John. Looking forward to the company Christmas party on Friday, but. But to be honest, at this point I am like 90% confident you're just making names up.

Speaker C: I still don't know who that is. Um, but I will sadly miss the Christmas party because I will be gallivanting in sunny India soon. But I hope it's fun.

Speaker A: Yeah, um, uh, as you can tell, we're recording this in the, um, lead, uh, up to Christmas, which means we're all getting into, uh, the festive spirit. Unfortunately, um, it's uh, less festive fun for England's, uh, cricketers down under right now. Um, but, um, that's the only clue I'll give to the reference this episode. Anyway, let's move on to today's topic. Um, uh, in part, it's been inspired by, uh, one of our recent cover features which Matthias wrote. So, Matthias, uh, do you want to walk us through what we'll be talking about today?

Speaker B: Gladly. Um, it's not cricket. So my latest cover feature was about fund administration. Um, and I kind of started out from a point of frustration, which is to say that for a while now, I've kind of noticed that, uh, fund administrators are the service provider operational professionals complain about the most. However, at the same time, a good third of the fund administration industry is backed by private equity. So this was kind of the starting point for what became a very long research into where the issue exactly is. And as with anything in life, it's a complicated set of market dynamics and a need for the relationship between a GP and their fund admin to evolve. Um, and if any listeners would like to know more, it's on the TDD website. Go check it out. Plug. Plug.

Speaker A: Um, yeah. And any regular reader of the drawdown will be familiar with those typical complaints, but by gps, uh, that it's incredibly difficult to change fund administrator, yet service quality is not always as high as end users would like. There's a high volume of staff churn, particularly in competitive jurisdictions like, uh, Luxembourg, um, and the technology they use can often be outdated and poorly integrated. All of these problems are then exacerbated by the near constant level of consolidation and M and A in the fund admin space.

Speaker C: M and A in the fund admin space, uh, has actually shown no signs of slowing down. It is of course, tough to stay under the radar as a fund admin because there are evolving client needs and admins have to keep up and sometimes consolidating with another fund admin becomes the better choice. But it's not always the best for GPS because it can cause disruption in their operations and so on.

Speaker B: Yeah. And so as part of my research, I had a couple of conversations about the stickiness of the fund admin business and, um, the challenges of unsticking and changing your fund administrator. Um, and so actually for today's session I invited Aidan o'. Flanagan, I sincerely hope I pronounce that name correctly, Director and Group Head of Funds at the Fund Admin Hiver and to talk more about it, because Hiven has fund admin transfers as a specific part of their service offering and they have won the accolade for best Fund Admin in the category for several years in a row at the Jordan Awards. So I really couldn't think of a better person, um, to have this chat with. Uh, unfortunately I am not there in person. So, um, over to you, John.

Speaker A: So I'm delighted to be joined by Aidan from High Vern. Aidan, thank you for joining us on the podcast today. Um, and as you know, we're talking about fund admin transfers. Keen, um, to get your, um, uh, insights into this because Hiven specifically focuses on this area, so we'll dive straight into it. Can you talk us through the situations, um, a GP would consider fund admins? Instead of simply just signing with a new fund admin for the next fund and keep the current one, uh, for the current fund that they're running, why would, um, a GP decide to go down the route specifically of doing a transfer?

Speaker D: Sure. I mean, it's uh, generally just comes down to a breakdown in the relationship and uh, service quality, you know, it's poor responsiveness from the administrator, there's lots of errors, there might be compliance issues. That's usually what it comes down to. It gets to a point where you know, the cost of staying, you know, it's just the risk is too high basically. So, so the hassle of making that transfer, it just outweighs that cost basically. If I put into numbers for you, six, seven years ago we did our first transfer, um, and we had three at the same time from three different clients. And since then about 40% of our client makeup is from switch business. And this is a scary statistic. We've switched business from 18 different fund administrators in the past, you know, seven, six years. Um, and that's quite a scary thing. And some of them multiple times as well.

Speaker A: Well, I was going to say are there any in particular that you probably wouldn't name names, but I think most

Speaker D: people in industry will know who I'm talking about. There's some there that surprised though. You know, 18, that's a lot. You know, some are small players, some are very large players, you know, and some are mid sized. There was a good, you know, there's a good spread but it always just comes down to poor service.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I guess the question within that is, um, so 18 different administrators where you've seen people wanting to jump ship. Um, is that because there are endemic problems across all administrators no matter kind of what size they are, or is it because there's kind of a range of motivations for doing so?

Speaker D: That's a good question. Um, I think generally it just comes down to the culture and the people. I mean we all talk about technology and technology is a good enabler, but it's all about the people. I think if you've got good staff and they're taken care of, generally you're going to get a good service. The biggest thing you look at is staff turnover or staff retention rates. I prefer to be a bit more positive about it. If you look at staff retention rates, that's got to be one of the key stats clients should be looking at. Once you start seeing the staff turn over, then that's where things start to slip because it's hard to hire people. Takes time to onboard them. Um, and at that point your existing staff are stretched and then they get fed up and then they leave and it's just a self fulfilling prophecy basically at the end of the day.

Speaker A: So then do you think it's fair because there's been so much kind of consolidation um, and ma m within the fund administration space that that has kind of directly contributed to the level of churn you're seeing not just at one or two administrators, but actually quite widely across the industry.

Speaker D: I think it has. I mean when I first came into the fund administration sector I came from the investment management sector and I outsourced fund administrators. But back then I think there was only one administrator in the world that was p backed. Um, so it actually wasn't an, it wasn't an ass class like it is today. Yeah, but I had terrible service back then as well. We ended up building a middle office team of 10 full time staff to shadow everything the administrators were doing. And they're both global players. I think the problem is, you know, on the what I found with the large global players, they just weren't right size for us. Even though we were quite a large manager. It just, we weren't getting a, a high touch service basically they had loads of other big clients giving them millions of revenue and I think we just weren't matched properly when I look back. Um, also what we did is pretty complicated to be fair. Um, I may be a bit harsh on my administrators back then, now that I'm in that seat myself because administrators have to do an awful lot that managers probably don't realize. There's ah, a lot of stuff that goes in the background that clients will never see. So until you're actually there you realize there's actually quite a lot that goes on behind the scenes. Um, another thing, uh, you know, if you look at transitions, you kind of wonder, you know, in an ideal world you wouldn't move a late vintage. Yeah, you know, fund basically. So Fund 1, 2 and 3 might make sense if you're launching Fund 3 or Fund 4 to move Fund 3, maybe Fund 2. But one, you wonder, you know, why would they. Yeah, and it just comes back to service. We've done a number of them where the first has come over and they're already distributing and they just had to get across because they were worried there were going to be errors in the cap tables, um, the distributions might be incorrect as results and they just wanted it all across. Basically.

Speaker A: If you get used to a certain level of service and you're not receiving it from uh, an older vintage, then the motivation for changing increases quite a lot.

Speaker D: Yeah, well, it's higher risk because it's a much more cumbersome transfer because the amount of data points the older fund is. You got thousands of different data points. So it's a fairly cumbersome move and I wouldn't take it lightly, but it just shows you how bad things are with their relationship, that they feel like they have to move that structure.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker D: Basically. And then another reason why generally probably makes sense is if you're getting a new administrator to do the next fund just for ease and operational ease, just have it all, you know, have the same LP experience for investors, the same reports, etc. Same branding, all these different experience. Basically it might make sense to move everything across. Um, but we have a number of examples where the funds, the existing funds haven't been moved across, we've just been given the brand new one and move forward. Um, and they've worked with two administrators basically. Um, and then on each new fund we get the new fund and then gradually the old administrator disappears. Yeah, basically.

Speaker A: So phased out instead. Yeah. Okay, so we talked a little bit about the demand there and it's, you know, Hivern was kind of from the outset saw that opportunity. Um, let's dig in a little bit more into the challenges. Right, so what makes them such? Uh, as you've already flagged up, you really need to consider this carefully because it's quite challenging, right, to undertake a transfer.

Speaker D: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean the first one is data, you know, it's data migration and the complexity around this and obviously the older the vintage, the more complex that gets. And going back to the M amount of data points you're going to have the records, you know, moving that across quite difficult. Um, and time consuming. Um, generally the burden falls on the new fund administrator M. The amount of time we spend on transitions are quite extensive. Um, and it also depends on technology and it depends on the outgoing administrators. Technology. Some administrators and ones you would expect would have good technology, don't have good technology. So you're ending up having to basically manually do everything. Manually input, you know, bookkeeping from day one, from inception. And we've done that quite a lot. Uh, rather than just being able to, you know, lift, you know, lift it from them, then pump it into our systems, you know, so we have a mixture of both. Um, so, yeah, a lot around data complexity, I would say. Um, and the volumes. Um, also we got to think of that LP communications, you know, you know, there's a bit of a, um, what would I call, you know, you need to manage your optics around why you got it wrong because you did choose this administrator. Why are you moving? You know, so you gotta make a very positive experience for the lp. It's gotta be in their interests and you've gotta be proactive on it. So it's getting that upfront communication to LPs if you think that's necessary. Maybe some LPs don't care, I don't know. But generally that's gotta be high at the top of a GP's mind when they're looking at transitioning.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: Um, another aspect of that with the LPs is KYC.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker D: And generally, you know, there's a good chance there's going to be some KYC remediation if you've had a poor service.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker D: There's a good chance, you know there's going to be some poor records there.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: And pretty much I would say 80% of the transitions we've did, probably more we've had to remediate. Um, KYC is one of those parts where you have to remediate, you have to do some KYC refreshes. I think whenever I talk to gps who are thinking of moving, that's one of their big worries and concerns. But in the end when you do it, number one, you're taking care of an issue that could come back to haunt you because AML legislation is so strict and that's where the biggest penalties are. Um, if you get caught for not having the right CDD on file, that could come back to haunt you. Um, on top of that, to this day we've never had a complaint or any negative feedback from LPs when we've gone out to refresh KYC. They, I think they're just used to it at this stage. Maybe especially the sophisticated investors, maybe the less sophisticated investors may not be used to all this kyc, but I think we all are at this stage. Um, I think timing as well. When do you time a transfer? Doing it mid close is a terrible idea. If you're making an investment, you're drawing money down from investors. That's probably a bad time to time it around then because we won't have access to the bank accounts yet and our distributions are terrible ideas. So in an ideal world, the best time to do it is when end of year audit, basically where the outgoing administrator finalizes that audit. So whether it be it gets signed off end of February, end of March and you do that switch, you do the transition on that date basically in the background we're doing all the record keeping. We're putting everything onto our systems, whether it's manually or automatically and checking all the data and reconciling. Um, that's probably the best time to do it doesn't always fall that way, unfortunately. M, um, we have done ones where we've had to share the audit and it's quite a complicated process. It's very painful because the outgoing administrator wants nothing to do with it, even though they have the history. Um, their, um, staff probably been on the board of these companies. So we haven't been on the board. So it's hard for us to sign off on an audit when M. We haven't been there. Whereas the existing directors might cause hassles and refuse to sign. So there can be some complications around that.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. A couple of things that you said there thought worth, um, circling back on. So one around the data point, and maybe there's a simple answer to this, but when you're talking about the added complexity, particularly of older funds and the quality of data, does that suggest that actually it's going to become easier for managers as we assume kind of the data integrity and governance around that improves as processes become more automated? Is it going to become more of a viable option for managers to switch because there's less of the complications of kind of creaky data?

Speaker D: Um, see, the thing is, I don't really necessarily see it as a complication for the gp. We end up doing all the work, quite frankly. You know, the GP needs to be there to, you know, we give regular updates to them and if there's any issues or slowness or lack of responsiveness from the outgoing administrator, we. We need them to see can they use any levers. But in the end it's us doing all that work. So will it make it any easier? Hopefully. But you're going to rely on every administrator in the world to be as clean on data and to have their data warehouses and to have data integrity. And I'm not convinced you're going to have that is the reality, because some won't have the resources to put into it, basically. And maybe it gets to a point where some administrators just disappear over time because they haven't invested properly in data, basically. Um, but I don't think it's going to change overnight, to be honest with you.

Speaker A: Yeah, um, we're not pointed towards some sunny uplands quite yet in terms of kind of data transfer.

Speaker D: I don't think so. And also you have to think about how good is that data anyway? If you're talking about you're getting a poor service, there's a really good reason you're getting a poor service. Right. And that correlates to poor records and Data just from our experience, you know, in general, most transitions we get, the record keeping is awful. I mean we have some instances where there's three years and there are no board minutes. And for these GP companies, especially offshore, it's all about managing substance, economic substance and substance offshore. And there's three years of outstanding minutes for that board. You know, and they're, you just know in the background they're recreating those board minutes.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker D: And they're. So there's, you know, the problem is even if you have the technology in place, you're getting a poor service. That probably means there's going to be remediation, there's poor data there. You're not going to be able to rely on that data coming across.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker A: What are the common pitfalls that you see in terms from the GP's perspective if they're looking to go through this process?

Speaker D: I mean there's remediation surprises. I've said it a few times now, you're going to have to assume you've got a poor service. There's going to be a cleanup exercise to do, however we deal with most of that. But you just have to be realistic. It's not going to be clean and smooth sailing, basically. Um, the other thing I'd say is underestimating the time it takes. I mean it's, I mean most fund administration agreements have three months notice periods in there. So when you terminate guaranteed, it'll never take three months. We've only managed to do one within the three months. One transition out of all those transitions we've done, all them extend way beyond that. Good reasons for that. It's a complex exercise.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: You know, the other is the outgoing administrators no longer incentivize. You're no longer a client. They're losing you. You were getting a poor service before you fired them. Imagine what kind of service you're going to get now. You know, they don't see you're not an existing client anymore. They're going to move on and prioritize other clients. Um, the other thing is they're losing revenue. So the outgoing administrator might want to extend this process bit more.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: So they keep getting paid revenue beyond the three months. So there's lots of, you know, lots of reasons why it takes longer. You know, there is a lot of information though that we need. We, we genuinely do need the three months. You know, reviewing all the kyc, getting all the, all the, all the records, putting everything onto our system, reconciling it. It does take a Good. Three months. Um, but generally it just depends how quickly we can get the information from the outgoing administrator so then we can start doing that work. But yeah, I think just be realistic on, you know, when you serve that notice, find out what happens after that notice period as well, if it, if it lapses. Because generally it does lapse. And that's another thing. They need to be wary of choosing the wrong administrator again, you know, um, do your due diligence, um, get client references, especially from client references that have moved from another administrator.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: To this administrator you're talking to. You know, get their references, um, get data from the administrator on client turnover, client satisfaction, client complaints, all that kind of stuff. You know, staff retention. They're probably the key things to be looking at basically I would say. Um, so yeah, just don't make that once burned, you know, twice shy and all that. Well, make sure you don't and people do make this mistake again.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well you have sympathy for GPS as well, right? Because it's quite a fluid and evolving market. Right. Where as we said before, there's lots of like M and A and um. So um, actually keeping track of where any one administrator's reputation is at any one time is a challenge.

Speaker D: It is, yeah, yeah. And it's a hard one. It's all about trying to find an administrator that can scale, uh, but at the same time retain good client service. And that's something we're always looking at. We think that's the, you know, that's, that's our vision basically is we, if we can become a scalable business, we don't want to be the biggest business in the world. We want to, our target is the mid market basically. You know, we want to be the best mid market fund administrator in the world. Uh, and to do that, you know, we, we need to be, while we're scaling, we need to do it slowly and methodically and not go jump from 200 staff or 300 staff to 2000 staff overnight. You know, it's none of that, it's gradually increments, increments organically. So for us we're investing an awful lot in this conundrum basically how do you scale but at the same time retain your uh, client satisfaction levels? And we've managed to do it all these years and we still do it, but we're investing an awful lot in technology. And we do actually believe technology will be part solution to this. It enables staff, but also we can get it to the point where it takes away tasks and maybe not 100% of tasks that administrators have to do. But there are much stuff in the background they have to do that they're boring, mundane pieces of work that if you could free your existing staff up away from those kind of things or the majority of those, or you know, you might not get, be able to get 100% of every task automated, but it's getting 70%, 80% of it automated, then you're at a point where those staff are freed up to just focus on the client relation. Basically. It then means you don't have to hire as many people.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: And that's the biggest problem with scaling. You're always out trying to hire people. There aren't enough good people out there well trained. Um, that's one of the biggest challenge we have actually is with these large administrators. Now they're all siloed off into one specific task and one role, whereas we're cross functional teams. So whenever we hire someone they're, you know, they're, they're quite senior.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker D: But they're not as good as our junior people because they're, they're not trained on all the other aspects that our team are trained on. So it's, it's, you know, so that's our biggest thing we're trying to fix. Yeah, but you're right for gps. I don't envy them.

Speaker A: No.

Speaker D: I have to say.

Speaker A: Yeah, and that last point is really interesting because to me it kind of mirrors the experience of GPS themselves. Right. Is uh, if you scale as a GP and you've had, and um, Tanya has written about this recently, um, you scale as a gp, you have a CFO that's grown with the business and they are multifunctional and they know how everything works. But as the team is growing, everyone underneath them is siloed. So then replacing that CFO if they leave is a huge challenge because how do you find that individual who knows how to do everything? And certainly no one externally is going to understand all the different aspects of um, the business. And so then that's a challenge if you're bringing someone in externally as well. So it sounds like it's a similar problem for yourselves as a fund administrator as you, as you scale as well.

Speaker D: Absolutely. I mean if you look at some of the fund administrators with 10,000 staff or 5,000 staff, I don't know how they do it quite frankly. And the reality is they don't, you know, they, they, they focus on their premium clients.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: And then you get the, the B team or the C team on the Other clients or the nine o' clock team?

Speaker A: The nine o' clock team, you know,

Speaker D: and that's the, you know, because it's just. No, no one's figured out the scaling issue yet. We think we have. It's going to take some time and a lot of real cash to do it. Um, but we're lucky we're all on the same platform, all on the same systems, you know, it's much easier for us. We haven't bought different systems and trying to integrate systems and all this kind of stuff. So we've got a pretty simple platform to work from, um, which I think makes it achievable for us.

Speaker A: Okay, um, just to wrap up then, let's talk about um, advice you would give to the CFO of a mid market GP who's thinking about um, uh, undertaking a, ah, fund admin transfer. Then what are the key things that they need to be weighing up in their mind?

Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, well, one is, you know, the cost of staying versus the hassle of moving basically. You know, is it going to damage your reputation? Is it going to make your life easier? How much time are you spending as a result of the service you're getting or lack thereof, you know, are you getting complaints from your LP base? You know, are call notices going out till late? You know, all these different things. Are you getting paid your management fees because of the delays in call notices? You know, then as a manager you're not getting a gp, you're not getting your fees till, you know, two months late or something like that. You hear all these war stories, you know. So I think the other thing I would say is, um, every single client that we have transitioned, if you ask them now, did they regret it? Not one will say they regret it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: So it's, it's one of those ones where when you do it you're like, why didn't we do this sooner?

Speaker B: You know.

Speaker D: And um, the problem is time and bandwidth, you know, for gps. So the CFO needs to make sure he's got a bit of bandwidth or his team has a little bit of bandwidth to go through this process. Even though they won't be involved in the full detail. We're going to have weekly calls with them to tell them where we're at. We're going to need them to squeeze in the administrator, the outgoing administrator sometimes. So there is input. They'll be having negotiations with the outgoing administrator in the background. So there's a bit of, there is work for them to do. Yeah, basically not the heavy lifting, but it's still time and effort on their part. Um, in an ideal world, they would have a load of data themselves and all the documentation and they would have everything the administrator has. In an ideal world, they have it and they have it saved nicely and it's nice and organized so that if we're not getting timely information from the outgoing administrator, we can lean on the CFO and his team and they can send us across the information.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, just, uh, just to pick up on that. There's, there's such a push away from kind of shadow accounting within the industry generally. But you see why fund administrators might be so keen on it because it protects their position even more. Right.

Speaker D: Well, yeah, well, I mean, but even, even so you just need the records. I mean, you know, just send us over all the CAPCA statements or, you know, you know, the board minutes or the, you know, there's simple stuff. They'd be surprised, you know, kyc, if they copies the kyc. That's a big one. Right, right. Um, that would all help, you know, um, them replicating the accounting, I think in some instances would help. We had one example where we transferred seven funds over and it was one of the worst transitions we've ever been involved in. Um, we had to reconstruct two of the funds from day one and, uh, they were the early funds. One and two. The cap count statements are incorrect, incorrect distributions were being given to investors. So we had to do a mass remediation exercise, then go out to LPs and then reinstate and. Yeah, but had they not done that on final distribution, it would have been pretty bad. And the embarrassment and the reputation for the manager, they would have been hit hard by it. Um, but that transition, not wanting to scare people, took over a year.

Speaker A: Wow. Okay.

Speaker D: And a lot of time on our side.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: But now it's in a brilliant position. Basically. We got, the CFO emailed us there last week saying, thank you so much. You know, it was a, it was a lovely email, you know, basically, you know, which is fun. It was always good for the team to hear. Yeah. Because when they're doing it, it's hell, it's, it's not great for the administrators, I have to say, because it's hard work, these transitions.

Speaker A: Yeah. But if you're delivering that end result

Speaker D: for the gp, that's, you have such sticky relationships then.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: Because you've, you know, and, and you only have to be a little bit better than the last time. Only joking. You know, we, we, we pride ourselves on being really good yeah. And you, by spending that time, you get a really good relationship with the manager team.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: And it becomes very sticky relationship, basically.

Speaker A: Um, Aidan, I think we're probably out of time, but um, as always it's a pleasure to chat to you and really appreciate you uh, coming in and talking us through your uh, transfer business.

Speaker D: Thank you very much.

Speaker A: Really good to uh, catch up with Aidan there. I think he gave a pretty um, uh, honest and kind of frank assessment of those dynamics in the market of why people would look to move, but also um, you know, the challenges that you get around fund um, transfers as well. Matthias, what are your thoughts?

Speaker B: I think for me, the kind of biggest um, point that Aidan made in summation order, the biggest question I would have is how do you know, okay, if you've decided you're only going to go fund admin transfer, there's only so much due diligence you can do on a potential new fund admin. And given how complex this process is to then realize at the end that the new fund admin maybe also isn't up to snuff or what you wanted. I think Aidan made the point earlier that he, that hybrid has done kind of m, sort of multiple fund admin transfers where fund first went one fund admin, then to another one and then to another one. And I think it's kind of what I wonder is at what point do you feel confident that you have enough information on your potential new fund admin to go okay, actually not better the devil I know, I'm going to go with this new one. You might have just left a very big fund admin to go to a smaller boutique one. And then in six months there's an article on the drawdown that tells you that your boutique fund admin has just been bought by the previous bigger one that you just left. Um, and so I guess there this kind of uncertainty around what am I getting myself into and given the speed of consolidation in this market, how long am I going to be into this before it changes? Because even to go to be very topical Hiven, um, underwent a merger earlier this year. And while I think it's still subject to, you know, the usual regulatory customary approvals, um, there is that Aidan was talking about scale earlier. Um, and as hiver and scales, there is then also going to be that question of to what extent might potentially be some of their customers, uh, left behind. As you pointed out, that is often a problem with these organizations getting bigger. But without them getting bigger, they also can't take on all of Those new projects, and it all sounds like a very complicated downward spiral. Um, that just makes me glad. I'm very glad I don't have to undergo any fund admin transfers in my life.

Speaker A: On that note, we probably should, uh, move on. I think we've kind of run out of time for today's episode. Um, but before we all tune out, what should our listeners be looking out for on the drawdown coming up? Matthias, how about you?

Speaker B: Very, um, good question. So, I'm assuming this episode is probably going to go live in the new year. Um, so I think that there's not a specific article or topic that I would like to shout out. But what I would like to say is that we've got a lot of new exciting things coming up. And specifically on the kind of journalistic side, there'll be a lot more regular updates on fund domiciles, on fund administrators, on legislation, on regulation. Um, and I'm currently having a lot of conversations around that and mapping out so that you will get timely information ahead of when those developments take place and you can prepare for it.

Speaker A: Fantastic. How about you, Tanja?

Speaker C: So I do have one, um, upcoming article about the European way of doing GP stakes. Of course, it's a growing market in the region and how GPS can remain competitive. Apart from that, lots, uh, to look forward to in the new year.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So we should probably wrap up there and wish, uh, everyone, uh, uh, a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Though, as Matthias says this, you'll probably be hearing this, um, in 2026. And as he says, we have lots of exciting plans for the drawdown in 2026 and a lot more to come for our operational, uh, leaders. So watch this space. Uh, but for now, a massive thank you to Tanya and Matthias for joining me once again.

Speaker B: Thank you, thank you.

Speaker A: And a thank you to our sponsor, HSBC ib, and all of you for listening, of course. Until next time. See you soon.