Funds startup firm Fund Recs goes for growth
Gearing up for expansion in 2017, Waterford startup Fund Recs now has its sights on fund administration markets in Luxembourg, London and New York.
Winner of a European ICT Startup award in May, the automated reconciliation software company has this year grown staff from four to nine and taken on a third significant client.
“By December we will have a team of 12 and in 2017 we plan to hire an additional 15 people. Our aim is to target large fund administrators with global operations,” says company CEO and co-founder Alan Meaney.
Winning the European Startup of the Year at ICT Spring Europe Conference earlier this year was a major milestone for the three-year-old company, which “gave us credibility and attention at an event attended by a huge number of the European fund administrators”, says Mr Meaney.
The company’s offering is a software product which is specifically tailored to the needs of fund administrators to automate cash and portfolio reconciliation.
Mr Meaney and company co-founder Padraig O’Scanaill set up Fund Recs in late 2013 to develop the software in response to a request from Mitsubishi UFJ Fund Services, the Irish subsidiary of Mitsubishi Bank.
“We had just left our jobs and set up a startup to develop collaboration software when we got the request. Although generic products were available, we were asked to develop something specific for fund administration. They asked us to do it because we had worked in the industry and we understood the problems,” he says.
Establishing the company at Arclabs in Waterford, the founders identified a significant market for an automated reconciliation solution which “would replace prehistoric enterprise software with pay as you go software as a service.
“We saw an opportunity to target fund administration companies which had an office in Ireland. Ireland is one of the world’s largest fund administration centres — assets of €3.6 trillion are administered here in an industry employing over 13,000 people,” says Mr Meaney.
In early 2014 Mr O’Scanaill, a software developer, set to work while Mr Meaney, who had 10 years experience in the funds administration industry, started talking to potential clients.
Having participated in the New Frontiers programme at DIT in 2013, Fund Recs signed up for the Wayra accelerator programme in Dublin in September 2014. Supported by Waterford Enterprise Board, it also secured Competitive Start Funding from Enterprise Ireland.
In early 2014, based on its first software prototype, Fund Recs signed up its first customer, Capita Asset Services, a unit of the stock market listed giant Capita. Later in the year Mitsubishi UFJ Fund services also became a customer.
When the Velocity platform for fund administrators was launched in January 2015, Fund Recs already had two significant customers. Mitsubishi Fund Services now uses the software in Canada and Singapore, as well as Ireland.
“The business is growing more quickly now we have proven our software and have reference sites,” says Mr Meaney.
Since inception Fund Recs has secured investment of €330,000, including €215,000 from private investors and Enterprise Ireland, which the firm has used to hire more staff.
During the summer, Pepper Ireland, part of the Australian owned financial services business also became a customer.
“We are now in negotiations with several fund administrators and expect to have eight customers by the end of the year,’’ Mr Meaney says.
The company has doubled its revenues in the past year and aims to have 20 customers by the end of 2017. In targeting the global fund administration market, he says that Fund Recs has an edge over many competitors who use older revenue models.
- Company: Fund Recs
- Location: Arclabs, Waterford
- Launched: November 2013
- CEO: Alan Meaney
- Staff: 9
- Product: Fund management softwrae
- Website: Fundrecs.com
