Finance Monthly Game Changer Awards 2019 Winners Edition

38 www. finance-monthly .com Q What are Abacus’s main services and what typical clients do you work with? We specialise in providing IT services to alternative investment firms, including hedge funds, private equity firms, asset managers and family offices. Our signature solution is AbacusFLEX, an IT-as-a-Service platform that includes managed IT services, backup and disaster recovery services, file servers, a 24/7 helpdesk, on-site support and all a firm’s back-of-house IT equipment including switches and routers. Our platform is available as either a private cloud option hosted in our own data centers, a public cloud option or a hybrid combination. We manage the entire IT stack for our clients, so they can focus on their own core competency – investment performance. Our IT platform is designed to be scalable, redundant and highly available. We also provide voice solutions and hosting for some of the most common investment industry applications. At the core of everything we do, and what our clients expect most from us, is our very high level of customer service. Q What IT challenges do alternative investment firms struggle with? What solutions to these challenges does Abacus Group offer? Investment managers are challenged daily not only by market movements, but demand from their customers, rigorous regulatory requirements, banking and business relationships, and more. Based on this, very early on, we developed a proprietary suite of compliance tools designed and developed in-house at Abacus to provide our clients complete transparency and control over their firm’s technology platform. We provide all clients with self-service access to our Abacus Client Portal, giving them visibility into not just their managed services but also an evolving library of important documents, reports and interfaces geared towards helping them achieve compliance and regulatory oversight. Q How important is cybersecurity in the investment management space? What risks have come with it? Cybersecurity is definitely one of the most important concerns in the investment management space. One of the biggest risks facing investment managers these days is social engineering. To combat this, it’s key to realise that cybersecurity is not just about tech and systems – humans play a significant role. To this end, we provide cybersecurity training and phishing tests to all of our clients’ employees, as part of our defense in-depth multi-layered security stack, on top of all our security technology systems and monitoring. Q What does the future of cloud computing look like? The financial services industry was a bit slower than others to adapt cloud technology. Early adapters chose private cloud services, mostly due to security concerns. As the public cloud becomes more secure and robust, we’re seeing investment managers wanting to use more public cloud solutions. So at Abacus Group we’re investing heavily right now in public cloud technologies, conducting rigorous testing to meet the expected demand and unique needs of our clients. ABOUT ABACUS GROUP: Abacus Group is a global IT services firm for alternative investment firms, providing an enterprise technology platform specifically designed for the unique needs of the financial services industry. The innovative and award-winning Abacus Cloud platform allows investment managers to source all technology needs as a service, offering the capacity to scale on demand to meet current and future cybersecurity, storage and compliance requirements. The company has offices in New York, NY; San Francisco, CA; Boston, MA; Dallas, TX; Greenwich, CT; Los Angeles, CA; Charlotte, NC; and London, England. ABOUT CHRIS GRANDI Chris is the CEO and Founder of Abacus Group. He has led the company since its inception in 2008, growing it into an award-winning global firm that provides outsourced IT services to over 550 investment management firms. Chris established the company with a cloud- first mentality, at a time when investment firms were hesitant to use cloud services due to security and compliance concerns. From the get-go, Chris ensured that compliance reporting and a multi- layered cybersecurity approach were built into all Abacus services. Under Chris’s leadership, Abacus Group has grown to over 170 employees across eight offices and currently offers a combination of leading-edge private, public and hybrid cloud solutions. Very early on, Chris established a strong company culture around trust, communication and top-notch service that has resulted in Abacus Group growing more than any other firm in its market segment over the last decade. Chris has extensive experience in the FinTech industry, having previously been the President of Eze Castle Integration. He also co-founded, and later sold, Dynamic Transactions Inc., which developed internet payment software for commercial banks. Early in his career Chris worked for Goldman Sachs. He has a BA from UCLA and an MBA from Harvard Business School. www.abacusgroupllc.com CHRIS GRANDI FINANCE MONTHLY GAME CHANGER AWARDS 2019 USA CEO & Founder of Abacus Group