We are enthusiastic about and actively pursuing a number of themes in 2005 including:

Shifting Asset Class Trends
Exchange Traded Funds and Hedge Funds have experienced substantial growth in recent years relative to other asset classes. As investor interest and sophistication—both institutional and retail—have grown over the years, and the regulatory environment has become increasingly stringent, the need for quality administration, investor relations, and performance reporting services for these funds has dramatically increased.
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Marketing Services and Technology
The continued economic recovery has prompted enterprises once again to focus on revenue-driving initiatives. Although cost management remains an important priority, Wall Street is looking for companies to post healthy top-line growth and managers are turning to marketing services and technology vendors to help them drive revenues. Our 2005 FTVentures IT Outlook survey, conducted with CIOs of the leading financial institutions that make up our Limited Partnership, reveals that Fortune 1000 companies are making significant investments in infrastructure to support customer-centric activities. Read more
Regulatory Compliance
Both public and private companies are spending billions of dollars annually to comply with Sarbanes Oxley, Patriot Act, Basel II and other mandates. As corporations transition from the ‘band-aid’ approach of hiring consulting firms to provide quick fixes and begin to invest in infrastructure that will provide sustainable solutions, they will create a significant opportunity for emerging software players.

Mortgage Business Processing
A rising interest rate environment has led to lower volumes of mortgage origination and refinancing, but heightened focus on cost containment efforts has increased demand by financial institutions for hosted or outsourced mortgage compliance, default processing, and other services.

IT Asset and Service Management
While IT hardware costs continue to fall, the ongoing cost of managing PCs, servers, and mobile devices continues to increase – accounting for approximately 80% of the lifetime cost of the asset – yet fewer than 25 percent of companies have an enterprise IT asset management solution in place to reduce and control these costs effectively. Similarly, telecom represents one of the top five expenditures for large organizations – but it is typically one of the least understood and poorest managed due to complexity, lack of centralized controls and poor billing quality. A sizeable opportunity exists for vendors offering innovative ways to improve the ongoing management of IT assets and services from resource planning, procurement and inventory, through deployment, maintenance and disposal/termination.

Outsourcing IT Services
Demand has increased for specialized vendors with deep domain expertise around specific business lines such as credit cards, retail banking, and capital markets technologies. Hybrid models have emerged to handle more complex application development which requires onsite domain expertise combined with cost-effective offshore development. Financial services firms are leading the charge in this trend, as increased competition within the industry drives firms to control their IT budgets while satisfying their development needs.


Maria Caprio has joined FTVentures as an Associate and will be focusing on business development activities. Maria’s professional experience includes analyst positions in the Private Funds Groups of Bank of America Securities, Credit Suisse First Boston and Chase Manhattan Securities.

Mike O’Neill has joined our Advisory Board. Mike served as Chairman of the Board and CEO of Bank of Hawaii Corporation and its principal subsidiary, Bank of Hawaii from November 2000 to August 2004. Under his leadership the company successfully completed a three year strategic plan to improve operating performance and profitability, and completed a major systems conversion that increased the institution’s efficiency. During O’Neill’s tenure the bank’s share price quadrupled from $11.25 to $47.48 (as of August 31, 2004). While at Bank of Hawaii, O’Neill served as a District Member of the Federal Reserve Advisory Council.