Familiarity Breeds Success

A big player in an elite niche, RFA delivers service par excellence to gain the enduring trust of their clients in the alternative financial sector

Since its founding in 1989, RFA has evolved into a leading business and technology services provider to the investment management sector, providing institutional-quality IT, financial cloud, and cybersecurity services to alternative investment firms. Specializing in meeting the unique needs of hedge funds, private equity firms, allocators, and asset and wealth management, RFA’s bespoke solutions are in high demand around the world, from startup hedge funds to the top asset management firms in the world.

“We deliver the services that would be the responsibilities of a chief technology officer or a chief information security officer,” explained RFA’s Global Managing Director and Chief Risk Officer, George Ralph, “everything from writing infrastructure and application strategy all the way through to building data warehouses, automating manual processes, and even procuring and supporting equipment.”

Typically, an alternative investment firm may want to stay ahead of technology and innovation but may not want to manage an in-house IT team, or they may have insufficient IT staff to execute certain projects. RFA provides the team structure and professional services to ensure their success.

Their biggest clients around the world often have circa 800 staff, but they are working on specific projects. RFA bolsters their teams and integrate to create extra flexibility with headcount and skillsets they may not otherwise have.

“A lot of the people launching hedge funds for the first time are people who sit within a bank and have never actually run their own business before,” Ralph posited. “It’s quite a niche sector in that respect, whereby they’re coming to us for advice not just on technology, but to meet other people like banks and prime brokers and lawyers and the right types of people who will help them without trying to market things they don’t necessarily need.”

A certified cyber assessor, auditor, and architect and widely experienced cybersecurity professional, Ralph is also an assessor for the British Computer Society (The Institute of IT) and a Certified IT professional. He joined the award-winning boutique firm in 2014 as a partner to assist in growing the business and its people.

In addition to establishing the firm’s London office, he’s helped RFA expand from three offices to 14. “We’re about to be regulated through the Luxembourg regulator, which means we’ll be the only regulated IT firm serving the alternative investment sector in the world, very exciting.”

Training has an essential role in RFA’s endeavors; to achieve their specific business objectives, clients must be able to use the tech they invest in as efficiently and effectively as possible. “A lot of what we do is about education and cyber and about their technology setup,” he said, noting that many challenges in tech and business are regulatory and compliance related.

As a global leader, RFA has deep knowledge of the many regulatory requirements impacting the financial sector, such as the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) in the European Union, the SEC, FCA, CSSF, FINMA, GDPR, and others. “Until DORA recently, many firms in Luxembourg were only allowed to have data stored in that country. Now they can use public cloud, but it has to be in mainland Europe,” he said. Because firms in Luxembourg couldn’t use public cloud, they don’t have any experience with it. “If one of our clients there wants to use public cloud, we’ll be there to give advice and educational support, helping them and their technology move forward.”

The company has its own compliance team. “We are giving guidance to our clients about what they can and cannot do, but also at the same time, we have to be very knowledgeable about what we can and cannot do because translating technology risks into business risks is a core competency for RFA; they examine a client’s risks and how they are being mitigated and monitored, identify the top risks and advise the client on where to invest in their technology stack.

“I think the only way to address risk is to make it relevant to those who have to be checking and supervising and those that can decide what to do next,” he said. Giving guidance to clients in the alternative investment sector – which is family office, hedge funds, private equity, and such – is very specific.” So specific, Ralph points out, that they serve about 2% of global firms.

RFA’s niche is very small in comparison to many managed services companies, but that size is a great strength. “You know the crossover between business and technology is much smaller in the finance industry,” Ralph said. RFA’s specificity narrows the crossover considerably. “We don’t have to do hard selling because people know each other already. The smaller community is nicer for me and my team because it means we’re going in warm. When people are outsourcing and asking for support and a partnership, they want to know someone’s a specialist.”

Every time RFA opens a new office, they learn cultures, nuances, and how to run businesses in diverse areas. One very large private equity firm that works with RFA has 29 global offices. “As partners, you help each other to learn.”

Education is an important part of Ralph’s work as a team leader, and he enjoys taking a social team approach with his staff. Innovative team bonding exercises build trust, and supportive environments allow everyone to come together to meet challenges and solve problems. “It’s really important that as a leader, no matter how much you think someone is good at their job and value them in their role, it’s selfish to keep them in that role because they’re the best,” he avowed. “You need to really handle people and lead them on the right path.”

To Ralph’s chagrin, that path has led a few of RFAs best and brightest out of the company. “Our clients are our partners. We’ve got some global private equity and hedge fund firms that are very, very successful and their chief technology officers are the engineers that RFA assigned them years before. They got on really well with the client, and it was the next path in their career. We sort of gave them over to the client, begrudgingly, probably.” What their elite clients don’t begrudge is RFA’s superior white glove service in a complex, fascinating industry sector that demands only the best.

“For myself and the rest of the leadership team, it is all about the people we employ. The key to great service is always about the ‘people’ this is what makes it work, happy people deliver a naturally good service and a happy engineer naturally owns issues. This ownership focus allows for a truly collaborative approach which is completely open and honest and a partnership that allows us to work together to achieve the same goals – happy staff, happy clients, great communication and relationships produce a naturally great service with clear expectations.”

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RFA are ‘the’ Technology partner to the Alternative Investment sector. Having advised, provided and supported our clients technology for over 30 years we are best placed to provide proactive, outstanding service to our clients (800+) globally (covering key financial locations in UK, Europe, United States and Asia). With offices and datacentres across the United States and Europe we provide face to face business advisory to our clients from risk and vendor management as standard to our private and public cloud platforms and 24/7/365 global support and SOC services

By understanding that outstanding services can only be delivered by outstanding people we focus on a specific industry to only put value added individuals in front of our clients and those associated to them

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Corporate Office

330 Madison Ave.
New York, NY 10017

Phone Number: 07769805554

Email: gralph@rfa.com

Homepage Link: https://rfa.com/