The Opus “Open Kitchen” approach to providing full operational transparency began over an Italian dinner at a Times Square restaurant promising hand-made pasta and freshly cooked classics. When the ravioli we ordered were served just one minute later, we knew that microwaves were doing the cooking. That poor dining experience reinforced our commitment to ensuring sure our own clients never had to trust that, behind the scenes, we do things the way we promised. No vaporware, hidden spreadsheets, or other shortcuts – all elements of operational risk often concealed by reporting layers in other administrators’ “black box” models.
This unique approach helped Opus cap off a successful 2024 by earning Hedge Fund Administrator of the Year in the Global Custodian Industry Leader Awards for the third consecutive year, as well as the 2024 award for Best Technology.
With 2025 underway, we’re proud to be increasingly recognised as the disruptive leader in using intelligent automations and digital solutions to mitigate risks and add value in innovative ways for fund managers and their investors. For example, we introduced Digital Subscriptions to solve for a historically error-prone, high-friction process. Being 100% paper-free with a 10x higher first-time completion rate than the traditional process, Digital Subscriptions are just one way that Opus improves the investor experience while making managers more efficient.
Similarly, Opus’s Digital Capital Call tool helps fund managers automate the entire end-to-end workflow, using modern best practices for eliminating both operational and cyber risks. Integrated cash recons and tagging enable fund managers to see their cap table in real-time while investors benefit from a streamlined process.
How is our track record for innovation sustainable? As an independent fund administrator, we’re in full control of our own tech stack and the decision to continuously invest in our platform. By pairing proprietary applications with our single database architecture, Opus is well-positioned to capitalise on rapidly emerging technologies that other administrators struggle to keep pace with or cannot adopt due to structural platform limitations.
We bring these innovations to life during our demonstrations, where we showcase our Digital Back Office – the industry’s first harmonised human-digital operations team. Opus Robotic Process Accountants (RPAs) handle traditionally manually-intensive tasks with machine-level precision, speed, and scale. Augmented by machine learning and computer vision, these digital agents free up our human professionals to focus on high-value review work and proactive client support. For context, RPAs correctly posted 300,000 fully automated journal entries last year!
This tech-first culture attracts top talent, maintains low turnover rates, and ensures consistent service delivery. At Opus, happy employees thrive in a collaborative environment where their work matters, and their ideas get implemented. We’re grateful that our culture has earned the Great Place to Work® certification in three continents, a distinction shared with companies such as NVIDIA and Salesforce. High-tech plus high-touch is a winning formula for Opus and our clients – fast, accurate service.
We’re fortunate to be able to pass the resultant savings from our own productivity on to our clients in the form of attractive economics. In an environment where fund managers must do more with less, we hear our approach is preferrable to administrators whose “cheap” fees are rooted in cutting corners and compromising on quality. Operational risk doesn’t matter until it does, and fund managers are considering the “total cost of admin” when assessing administrators. Not just fees, but the likelihood of having to divert resources to uncover and correct their administrator’s errors. With Opus there’s no handholding required.
Finally, Opus is differentiated by our capacity. We’re told that a growing number of administrators are turning away new business and paring client service levels due to bandwidth constraints. In contrast, Opus continues to scale through intelligent automation and digital-first solutions, providing fund managers with a long-term partner who evolves alongside their businesses, while maintaining the highest service standards now and into the future.