The 2016 Tech 50: Tyler Kim

A year agoTyler Kimwas wearing two hats at Montreal-based MaplesFS. He was chief information officer, having built and managed the fund and fiduciary services firm’s technology platform after arriving in 2009 from Toronto hedge fund firm Northwater Capital Management. As of April 2015 he was also co–global head of Maples Fund Services, underscoring the importance of information technology to the company’s core business. Today Kim is down to one title, global head of fund services, but he is no less of a technologist than he always was. “It became a bit redundant,” says the Stanford University BS in industrial engineering. Dropping the CIO title is “emblematic of our transformation into a technology company.” An affiliate of offshore law partnership Maples and Calder that has been in the fund administration business since 2005, MaplesFS has $59 billion in assets under administration. Rather than going toe-to-toe against the multitrillion-dollar elites in that business, MaplesFS creates bespoke niches in what Kim, 42, defines as “targeted offerings for institutional investors.” A case in point, riding on Kim’s flexible IT architecture, is a consolidated performance- and risk-reporting mandate from the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System. The $3 billion pension fund said in April that it had turned to MaplesFS as part of a plan that includes a realignment of investment strategy and improved governance. MaplesFS is breaking new ground in the San Francisco area, where it opened an office last year, by introducing administrative disciplines to marketplace lending. Originally known as peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, the high-flying sector is increasingly attracting institutional funding. Without independent recordkeeping at the individual loan level, which MaplesFS has developed algorithms to perform, institutional money would be scarce: MaplesFS has identified Evolution Capital Management of Santa Monica, California, as a marquee client, with four loan funds being administered. “This is a new way to apply the skills of Maples, an opportunity to get in on a rising tide in an area that is underserved,” Kim says. Next up for independent administration treatment: private equity funds, which, Kim points out, are largely self-administered in North America but less so in other parts of the world.

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