RiskCap's American Push Part Of International Strategy - Founder

Tom Burroughes

17 December 2018

London-based RiskCap International, which provides services to the European fund management sector, has branched out into the Americas recently with a top-line appointment, signalling a new phase in the five-year-old firm’s growth.

A few days ago, the business hired Thalius Hecksher as chief executive of RiskCap International Inc, building a wider presence in the Florida market and Americas. He is a 20-year financial services industry veteran.

The firm, which provides risk, compliance and corporate governance services to funds - growing requirements in this increasingly regulated field - has a Malta office besides its London one and the presence in the US. The organisation oversees about €6.5 billion in client assets, of which 48 are UCITS structures, 37 are Alternative Investment Funds, eight are Professional Investor Funds. It also has 25 management company clients.

Risk management, compliance and reporting work are the main requirements that clients bring up for RiskCap, Paul Magro, founder and group managing director, told WealthBriefing from the firm’s offices in Malta recently. The Alternative Investment Funds Management Directive, aka AIFMD, has generated a considerable amount of regulatory and compliance work, which the firm is well-placed to give, he said.

The acronym alphabet soup of modern regulations: MiFID II, AIFMD, PRIIPs (Packaged Retail Investment and Insurance-Based Products}, GDPR and a slew of anti-money laundering directives have put a premium on the kind of support that a specialist firm can provide. Even some of the large fund management houses struggle to keep up, which is why outsourcing some of the support makes the case for firms such as RiskCap to exist.

Magro predicts that regulatory technology – devices and solutions helping firms keep pace with new rules and the ability to act rapidly when new information comes up – is already a growth area and will continue to be so, he said.

“And we are certainly hiring more people,” he said, in a comment that was borne out by the new chief executive in Florida.

“We’re looking at other markets,” he said referring to Asia and Latin America. And now, North America is added to that list.

Besides funds and management companies, the firm has some insurers, banks and family offices as clients.