I joined Carne in April 2020 as the Head of Investment Manager Due Diligence. Prior to joining Carne I worked at JP Morgan’s Private Bank in the Operational Due Diligence (ODD) team, where my main responsibility was to assess the operational risks of European and Asian investment managers, to ensure that they were suitable for the Bank’s clients. Prior to JP Morgan I worked at Mercer as an ODD consultant, where similar to my previous role I assessed European investment managers on behalf of institutional clients but also provided operational consulting; predominantly to newly established investment managers who wanted to ensure their operating model was appropriate for the size and complexity of their business. Working at both JP Morgan and Mercer provided me with exposure to investment managers from a variety of asset classes, including hedge funds, private equity, real-estate, infrastructure and also across various geographic locations, which has been very insightful both culturally and professionally. I have also worked at Aberdeen Asset Management, Permal, a Fund of Hedge and started my career back in 2007 working for KPMG on their graduate scheme.

Joining any company is always a new experience as each Firm carries their own identity and culture, however joining a Firm during a global pandemic is a truly unique experience. The question many people have asked is, ‘what was it like joining a new company during COVID-19?’  My response is that the experience has been a lot smoother than I had expected, which I have attributed to two key factors. Firstly, the people at Carne have been extremely welcoming and my first week was dedicated to meeting various people from across the business who have all been critical in helping me settle at the Firm. Carne’s motto is that they employ the nicest smartest people, and this has definitely been my experience to date. Secondly, the technology we have in place has meant that communication has been very easy and even though I have only met a handful of my colleagues in person, I have managed to build up some good relationships with individuals in Luxembourg, Dublin and London.

The main reason for joining Carne was that I wanted a role that was dynamic and where I would be able to contribute to the development of the investment manager due diligence process through championing effective work processes and collaborating on commercial opportunities. My aim for the first year at Carne is three-fold.

• The first milestone was to build out a global investment manager due diligence process such that investment managers are subject to the same level of due diligence for both the Dublin and Luxembourg Management Companies.
• The second objective is to digitalise the investment manager due diligence process in CORR, so that all aspects of the process from the dissemination and completion of DDQ’s, to the risk assessment of the investment manager and the due diligence report are all performed in the system. A digitalised solution allows us to benefit from a more efficient process and provides Carne with valuable data on our investment manager delegates.
• The final piece of the jigsaw is to leverage CORR, our knowledge of investment managers and capabilities to help our existing and potential clients perform their investment manager due diligence in a more efficient and digitalised manner.

The investment manager due diligence module within CORR is a very powerful tool and coupled with our operational hubs in Wexford and Kilkenny can help allocators not only to reduce administrative burden but also increase capacity for their ODD teams to focus on higher value added activities such as resolving high risk issues identified during the desktop due diligence and initial risk assessment.

While it is still early days and bearing in mind, we are still in the midst of a global pandemic we are making good progress and I am very much looking forward to the journey ahead!