Maitland is an independent third party fund administrator with over USD200bn in assets under administration. To be seen as a viable partner to hedge fund managers today, administrators need to offer a comprehensive range of products and services. This is particularly important in light of the regulatory environment that has emerged in recent years, with the AIFM Directive representing a key challenge.
To support managers in this area, last year Maitland established a Luxembourg-domiciled Specialised Investment Fund platform, MS SICAV SIF, an umbrella structure that avails of Maitland’s AIFM license. This gives managers the ability to launch AIFMD-compliant funds without any of the compliance and regulatory pressures of acting as their own AIFM.
“We are now going through the filing process with the CSSF to extend our AIFM license to support managers in the PERE fund space,” confirms David Kubilus (pictured), Head of Business Development, Client Management and Marketing at Maitland. “It’s a fascinating time to be working in this industry. AIFMD now gives managers of alternative investment funds the ability to market their funds in the EU to access capital; to be able to create a product that can utilise the AIFMD passport and distribute it as broadly as possible.”
Last year, Maitland won a range of new mandates, including some from Brazilian private clients and family offices as regulations prompted them to look for different ways to protect their assets. Total assets under administration totaled $200 billion at year end.
For 2015, the pipeline looks solid and Kubilus intends for it to remain so: “We intend to expand our business development efforts both in the UK and North American markets. We are seeing new launches among our existing clients, which reaffirms our notion that we are providing an excellent level of service,” confirms Kubilus, adding that the firm’s expansion plans will be two-pronged: “We plan to expand organically by building out the business development and client management teams here in Europe. Secondly, we will be looking for ways to extend service lines and create additional scale where it fits the overall strategy of the firm.”
Maitland built its foundations as a legal and tax advisory firm. As such, its ethos is to treat each and every client as if they were a private client.
“Underpinning that requires having a world-class technology infrastructure in place. The combination of our infrastructure, our ethos and the ability to attract the best talent puts us in a good position to continue growing the business,” states Kubilus.
Many of the large universal and custodian banks provide administration and reporting services, in addition to custody and depositary services. Maitland has taken a different approach.
“We’ve taken it in the other direction. We provide the ManCo service as well as legal services and that adds a lot of value, especially to boutique managers and smaller family offices who require a high-touch all-encompassing service. With Basel III regulation, in addition to the tremendous investments they’ve made in technology, bank-owned fund administrators work off a much higher fixed set of costs than someone like Maitland,” says Kubilus.
Consequently, Maitland is able to support managers who are more in the mid-size range and still provide a good service on a profitable basis. “That’s an advantage for us to leverage off,” says Kubilus.
