FinCap brings in a treasury specialist to back its private markets liquidity promise

Private markets managed accounts sell advisers on a simple promise: periodic liquidity, no capital calls, institutional access without the lock-up. That promise only holds if the plumbing behind it works. FinCap has just hired the person meant to build that plumbing.

The Melbourne-based private markets firm has appointed Akbar Shah as head of treasury and operations, a role created to underpin the FinCap Platform and its inaugural Helm portfolio range, Helm Income and Helm Growth.

The two portfolios give wholesale investors and their advisers access to private markets through an advised, managed account structure. Periodic liquidity is built in. That removes the capital calls and multi-year lock-ups that have historically kept many advisers away from the asset class.

A career built on the unglamorous parts of banking

Shah spent much of his career at NAB, in senior roles across capital markets, group treasury and corporate and institutional banking. He later moved to Hume Bank as chief financial officer. There, he built the treasury, finance and operations function from scratch. He also developed its funding frameworks and led financial planning, analysis and capital management.

Under his watch, the bank secured what FinCap describes as its first investment-grade credit rating.

“What drew me to FinCap is the chance to build a treasury and operations function from the ground up for a platform purpose-built for private markets,” Shah says.

Why the mandate matters more than the title

At FinCap, Shah will oversee cash management, liquidity, funding and special purpose vehicle structures. It is a deliberately unglamorous mandate, and that is the point.

Liquidity in a private markets managed account is not a marketing line. It comes down to how well the treasury team manages cash, funding and redemptions across multiple managers and strategies at once.

Get it wrong and periodic liquidity becomes a promise the platform cannot keep when investors ask for their money.

“Getting the cash, liquidity and funding foundations right is what lets wholesale investors access these assets with confidence, and it is what will carry the platform as it grows.”

A crowded race for private markets managed accounts

The appointment lands as more of the market chases the same opportunity. Pinnacle Investment Management Group holds a strategic stake in FinCap and has been backing boutique expansion into private markets across its stable. FinCap is not the only platform trying to package institutional-grade private equity, private credit and real assets into adviser-friendly structures.

But it is competing in a market where the packaging promise is easy to make. Delivering periodic liquidity across multiple underlying managers is where the field thins out.

Christian Ryan, FinCap’s executive chairman, frames the hire as tied to that growth. “As we grow the platform and bring more to market, the strength of our treasury and operational foundations is what allows investors to rely on periodic liquidity and institutional-grade governance,” Ryan says.

The firms that succeed will be the ones whose liquidity terms survive contact with a redemption request, not just a pitch deck.

What advisers should check

Due diligence on FinCap Platform, or any comparable offering, should extend to the operational team behind the liquidity promise, not just the portfolio construction in front of it.

A managed account structure only delivers periodic liquidity if the treasury function can meet redemptions across multiple underlying managers. Without that capability, periodic liquidity is a promise, not a feature. A fire sale is how that promise breaks.

“Akbar’s background building treasury and finance functions from first principles makes him the right person to lead that function as we develop,” Ryan says.

Shah’s appointment gives FinCap a credible answer to that question. The first time investors ask for their money back at scale will test whether that answer holds.

FinCap operates two channels: the FinCap Platform, the managed account structure Shah now supports, and FinCap Direct, which offers wholesale investors single asset opportunities in operating real estate and private equity across the Australian mid-market.