Wealth & Finance Finance Awards 2015

Wealth & Finance Finance Awards 2015 40 Halcyon Financial Technology , L.P Best for SME Financial IT Support - USA Providing tailored information technology services for private equity, hedge funds and investment management firms, Halcyon Financial Technology L.P. currently has clients all across the United States, with offices in San Francisco, New York and Newport Beach. We spoke recently with the firm to get a first-hand account of their work and how this industry is impacting the sectors they serve. Company: Halcyon Financial Technology, L.P. Name: Rodric O’Connor Email: [email protected] Web Address: www.halcyonft.com Address: 505 Sansome Street, Suite 1925 San Francisco, CA 94111 Telephone: (415) 683 0740 In aggregate our clients manage in excess of $90 billion of investments with the SEC and/or FINRA regulating all of our clients. We operate along four main product lines which are tailored IT service, infrastructure and application projects, salesforce consulting for invest- ment pipeline, portfolio management, fund raising and LP management and technology cost reduction for private equity portfolio companies. From a technology perspective, we expect to see a continued focus on cybersecurity at all levels within firms in the finance industry which will include proactive employee security education in reaction to the increase in frequency and sophistication of spear phishing attacks. Even the smaller regulated firms are looking to adopt IT best practices and procedures for cybersecurity in response to the increase in risk and scrutiny. Larger clients are starting to look at the implementation of advanced firewalls, such as Palo Alto networks, to provide visibility of application traffic and greater threat prevention. Across all sizes of clients we are recommending the adoption of two factor authentications to protect remote access and cloud services. The attributes we adhere to include the utmost of integrity and profes- sionalism when working with our clients. We keep our promises and deliver above and beyond expectations, priding ourselves on our exper- tise and focus on the financial industry. Our reputation grows each time we help clients reach their goals, this is what it takes to be successful in this industry. We only hire employees who understand and are driven by our firm’s goal to deliver excellence in IT service. Our team delivers the best service possible and we seek clients who realize that high quality tech- nology is critical from them to achieve their goals. To remain abreast of developments, we are increasing our expertise in cloud services, such as Salesforce, Microsoft 365 and BOX, as these services are more appropriate for our clients. We investigate new tech- nology as it emerges and evolves, determining what is appropriate to be used by our clients and when. We measure success based on user satisfaction at the end of every case we close. We guarantee to our clients that their average rating will exceed 4 out 5. In five years, we have averaged 4.93/5.0, and have never had to pay out to a client. 
 Looking to the future we know that the combined pressures of increased regulatory scrutiny, and the industrialization of the hacking and phishing for profit activity will continue to drive the growth in cybersecurity activi- ty and infrastructure. In the Industry we also predict that the consolida- tion of current cloud providers will cause some short- term chaos and disruption that will need to be managed carefully. We are also excited about the opportunity to help increase mid-market PE’s portfolio compa- nies EBITDA by reducing their operational technology expenses. Our challenge, from a growth perspective, has been educating potential clients of the value of our service versus that of a generalist technology provider. However, more and more firms understand the value of our services and the level of specialization that is needed within the alterna- tive investment industry due to the increase in regulation and pace of technology change.