A Future of Finance interview with David Barry, Global Head of hedge fund products at Apex Group Ltd

Interview with David Barry

David Barry is global head of hedge fund product at Apex Group, which provides third party fund administration, management company, custody and banking services to alternative asset managers and family offices. In our recent webinar on the Future of Fund Accounting he mentioned a number of areas in which Apex is using new technologies. Dominic Hobson caught up with him again to understand more about how the firm is using AI and blockchain to enhance service capabilities as well as improve operational efficiencies.

David Barry

Global Head of hedge fund product at Apex Group

David is a seasoned financial services professional with over 20 years’ experience in the alternative investment space across operations, asset management and business development. He formally joined Apex in December 2018, as Global Head of Hedge Fund Product, following the Group’s acquisition of the Custom House Group.

Questions that were asked

Pressure from inside the company and from its shareholders to cut costs and automate processes and data flow is doubtless continuous. But do you also see pressure coming from clients to adopt new technologies?

Do Digital IDs mean the on-boarding process is more efficient when the same investor subscribes to another fund?

What can you do using technology that you could not do at all before (i.e. does technology just make things cheaper and faster or does it make entirely new services possible) ?

We hear a lot about data, but the problem seems to be that the data is never in the right format. To what extent is data format and quality an obstacle to automation in your business

What new (as opposed to improved) services have you been able to develop out of data and new technologies?