The 2013 Tech 50: Tyler Kim

In the increasingly concentrated fund services industry, how does a firm with $40 billion in assets under administration compete with operations many times its size? For Maples Fund Services, a division of Montreal-based MaplesFS, the answer lies in a commitment to bespoke services beyond basic administration and to the technology, designed by CIO  Tyler Kim, that makes them possible. The Stanford University industrial engineering graduate and former hedge fund CTO, who joined privately held MaplesFS in 2009, says that “revenue growth has been great” and assets under administration are likewise on an upward path. The 39-year-old is anticipating more highly customized deals like the 2012 managed-account risk reporting mandate from the $6 billion San Bernardino County Employees’ Retirement Association. Such work for high-end clients led to the launch last fall of the MaplesFS Connect risk dashboard, a scaled-down, “productized” version that brings sophisticated, customized performance analytics within reach of smaller managers. Size and scale do matter, says Kim, who is looking to shore up his infrastructure for organic growth and potential acquisitions. “Last year our separate teams — focusing internally on fund administration and externally on client work — were merged under me, creating the scalability benefit we were looking for,” he reports. Kim oversees 45 I T and data management people in Montreal and a dozen more in Dublin and Hong Kong.