Rea Sarah Caldeira is an accomplished professional with over eight years of experience in the alternative investment industry, specializing in sales and operations across hedge fund and fund accounting services. She holds an MBA from Oxford, is CIMA-qualified, and is a gold medalist from Christ University.
In an insightful interaction with Women Entrepreneurs Review Magazine, Rea Sarah shares her insights on the future of the hedge fund industry. She highlights challenges faced by emerging female hedge fund managers while also talking about the role of women currently play in driving transparency & innovation in the global investment industry. Rea talks about technology’s impact on innovation in the financial services industry and highlights key strategies for navigating the dynamic industry.
Sharing sound advice with aspiring women leaders in financial services, Rea explains the importance of staying curious, informed, and relying on mentors.
To know more about Rea Sarah Caldeira’s perspective, read the article below.
Given that the hedge fund industry is dominated by traditional gatekeepers, what challenges do female emerging managers face while launching hedge funds?
Access to capital from allocators remains the most critical challenge for emerging female managers. Female fund managers are typically underrepresented in allocator networks and less likely to receive anchor and seed funding, having to demonstrate longer track records and bring larger personal capital to the table. Many of these opportunities also happen through informal male-oriented social settings, such as golf outings, closed-door investor circles, which further widen the gap.
That said, Bangalore-based Mala Gaonkar’s launch of SurgoCap Partners and ex-Viking PM Divya Nettimi’s launch of Avala Global are billion-dollar launches that have paved the way for more female managers and have inspired women across the industry. Groups like 100 Women in Finance, Women in Alternative Investments Network, and Private Equity Women Investor Networks are critical in connecting allocators with deserving female managers who have a strong record for delivering alpha.
In the current global landscape of alternative investments, how are women professionals influencing the shift towards transparency, digitization, and investor-centric fund administration models?
Female professionals in compliance, operations, and investor relations are core to the movement toward open, investor-centric cultures, often architecting internal reporting frameworks across ESG, fee transparency, and ODD frameworks to meet growing LP mandates.
At my firm as well- Sudha Gupta, Chief Technology Officer, is a woman who has led our proprietary fund administration technology to be more investor-centric with features like e-subscription to streamline investor onboarding while managing data integrity, cybersecurity, and regulatory compliance. Women professionals have been a key in driving this movement, and their presence across all levels – CXO and senior leadership, as well as junior programmers, tech leads, and product managers - is a key in making headway.
What role will technology and innovation play in the future of financial services?
Technology and innovation will be pivotal in shaping the future of financial services. Within the fund administration space, technology has led to the digitization of the subscription process so that investors can seamlessly invest across funds. Innovation within financial services has simplified the process for fund managers to create material for the Data Room and monitor the pipeline of prospective investors. Building customer-centric products that are secure has become paramount for market leaders in the financial services space to stay relevant and set themselves apart.
In a rapidly changing financial landscape, what strategies are used to stay up-to-date with industry trends and ensure that the team is well-prepared to adapt to these changes?
In a rapidly changing financial landscape, it’s critical to see the writing on the wall and ship products quickly to market. For example, cryptocurrency was a novel concept in 2017 but has now garnered interest from multi-billion-dollar institutional investors. While the rest of the industry took a while to warm up to crypto as an asset class, we were an early adopter and benefited by capturing a large share of the market, and saw a wide breadth of client use cases to enhance the products. Regulatory changes across different jurisdictions impact compliance requirements for asset managers, and staying up-to-date ensures teams are well-prepared to adapt to these changes.
What advice would you give to women aiming to rise to leadership roles in the asset management industry?
First, stay curious. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and surround yourself with people who are both knowledgeable and kind enough to give you the answers or point you in the right direction.
Second, serve as a reservoir of knowledge to your clients so you can propel their growth, find opportunities for colleagues that they are well suited for, and connect trusted partners wherever possible.
Third, find female mentors whom you can lean on and actively engage male allies as partners. Once you do all this, remember to pay it forward.
Lastly, for women aiming to rise to leadership roles *don’t stay in the background*. Keep yourself informed to stay relevant and ensure you use your platform and voice to make yourself visible (even if it’s an uncomfortable feeling).
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