Alternative Investment Awards 2016

www.wealthandfinance-intl.com 17 Best Emerging Manager Managed Account Platform 2016 Sentinel Growth Fund Management provides a unique platform serving both emerging fund man- agers and allocators. We invited Veteran Industry Professional and Sentinel Growth Fund Manage- ment Chief Executive Officer Mark Varacchi to talk us through this innovative platform and how it is changing the investment landscape. Company: Sentinel Growth Fund Management Website: http://www.sentinelfundmgt.com/ The idea for Sentinel’s distinctive platform was formed around four years ago, when we realised that we could create a platform that would provide each side of the market (allocators and portfolio managers) with the solutions we felt they needed the most. For emerging managers, we allocate to, we provide a platform that assess their skillset and then supports them in their portfolio manage- ment, providing back office solutions after identifying a true “repeatable process”. This combination allows the manager to focus on their core competency: generating alpha. The biggest reason Portfolio Managers benefit from being accepted for an allocation on the platform is because in this environment, allocators look at the many “hats” that Portfolio Managers have to wear in their first few years in starting a new business as a direct drawdown on performance. Simply, if a manager isn’t focusing their time on research or generating alpha like when they previously had a large team around them, most allocators will then wait until there is a larger team in place and scalable infrastructure before allocating. The Sentinel platform allows managers to leverage a full infrastructure and team to then build their performance and business around it. On the other side of the market, we provide allocators, including Fund of Funds and Family Offices, with live transparency, risk management and control over their investments and managers through our platform. A typical fund investment in principle is an investment in a non-trans- parent vehicle. An investor letter sent 15 days after month end showing a snapshot of a portfolio taken at exactly 4pm on the last day of the month is not a great representation to an investor of what has gone on in the portfolio during the rest of the timeframe which that investor letter actually represents. Even T+1 reporting to us is not efficient. We felt when building the platform as we do now that Separately Manage Accounts ( SMA’s ) would continue to grow as an investor choice and be what the investor would choose (if actually given the choice) as an in- vestment solution over time. We at Sentinel wanted to be ahead of that change in mandate and hopefully lead the way with our platform. The most basic definition is if you are receiving information in a way where you would need a time machine to do anything about it, it is not truly an efficient way to be invested. The offer of transparency is particularly vital to the growth of emerging managers as it is a continuing key focus for investors, and therefore by providing a platform which offers this transparency we are enabling our managers to work with allocators they may not have been able to access without our infrastructure. Here at Sentinel we believe in true transpar- ency and risk control- this means that investors should not only know what is happening after it has occurred, but should instead have access to real time updates on the portfolio. In addition, each account has a dedicated risk manager that watches the portfolio in real time and is able to communicate with the investor about how their risk parameters are set, observed and maintained. Unlike in a Limited Partnership structure, in which allocators have to invest in every fund on the platform pro rata and worry about the com- ingling of assets, here at Sentinel we offer investors a series structure, which ring-fences each series and does not allow for comingling of assets, giving allocators the opportunity to choose specific funds a la carte based on their investment make up and manager risk profiles we compile from our due diligence. This allows an investor to choose only the managers that complement their existing investments. AI16073