CurAlea Associates LLC was established by Seb Calabro and Peter Ort (pictured) in 2010 to provide risk advisory services to hedge funds and other buyside clients.  The firm delivers high touch, high value-added services to clients via both quantitative portfolio risk analyses and qualitative interpretations of portfolio risk.  CurAlea’s hedge fund clients typically employ fundamental investment strategies with a focus on liquid securities.  

Prior to establishing CurAlea, Calabro and Ort spent many years at both hedge funds and hedge funds of funds, giving them insight into hedge fund portfolio construction and risk management and the ever growing requirements and demands of hedge fund allocators.  
 
CurAlea offers a customisable risk solution and can work either in a completely outsourced manner or can implement the CurAlea RiskSuite, an automated risk engine and reporting software package to facilitate more frequent assessments of a client’s portfolio risk profile.  The firm has also been engaged for one time risk consulting projects to help clients solve specific challenges or to help them select and implement third party risk management solutions.
 
Regarding CurAlea’s risk advisory service, Ort offers the following comments: “Our approach is that there is no one right way to manage money, construct a hedge fund portfolio, or manage portfolio risk.
 
“Different hedge funds have different investment philosophies, risk/return objectives, and loss tolerances. For a risk management philosophy and process to be effective, they must be in sync with the hedge fund›s investment philosophy.
 
“Risk management should also be objective, which is why an outsourced solution works well for our clients. It’s also important to recognise that all quantitative analyses have inherent flaws, which is why we provide qualitative interpretations of portfolio risks to suggest where specific models may be understating or overstating portfolio risk depending on the market environment.”
 
On winning the Hedgeweek Award as best risk management software firm, Ort says: “What’s most rewarding is that the selection process for the award was driven by our clients.”