Resolution IT and Core Fund Services

Core Fund Services (Guernsey) Limited (“Core”) is a dynamic new financial services business providing fund and fiduciary services to the Guernsey market. Core is independently owned with a long-term sustainable strategy, offering a full suite of bespoke fund administration, accounting, compliance and corporate governance services to investment funds and management entities.

Over the course of his career within the fund services industry, Martin Scott, the CEO and founder of Core has identified that one of the major operational difficulties for firms in the sector arises from the complexity of their IT infrastructure. Therefore, for Martin, it was essential that Core’s IT structures were created to be sophisticated, resilient and user friendly from day one.

Resolution IT’s partnership with Core is a great example of how the right IT partner can successfully assist a new business in getting up and running quickly and effectively.

To explore their partnership further, Martin spoke about why he trusts Resolution IT to help his business grow.

Core’s founder and CEO, Martin Scott, speaks about his partnership with Resolution IT.

“Things move quickly in our industry, and I know that Resolution IT will move quickly with us.”

Fundamentally, it’s important that Core’s own business model is as simple and efficient as possible. Due to the legal and regulatory obligations in our industry, our clients will often have complicated structures, so we want to ensure we can prioritise our clients’ needs without any obstacles at our end.

Our technology infrastructure needed to stand the test of time and aid us in supporting clients both now and long into the future. This meant making the strategic decision to invest more from day one, which we believe will prove much more cost effective and sustainable in the long-term.

Core’s business culture is about human beings and relationships. As a result, we look for companies that share these values and apply them in a business world, and to that extent we have found Resolution IT to be a great partner for us and their team extremely helpful and professional, just like Core’s people.

The best organisations have leaders that really care about all aspects of their business and such people ensure that business in undertaken in the correct way, whilst having immense pride in their people and their outcomes. That’s something about Resolution IT that struck a chord with me from our first meeting with their team.

From the very start of our partnership, Resolution IT have been highly engaging and proactive, whether it’s the helpdesk dealing with our queries swiftly, the technical team advising on best practices for our infrastructure set up or our account manager being available to discuss and plan both our current and future needs whenever required.

A significant effort has been put in from their side and I’ve been very impressed by the Resolution IT team. Of course, it’s inevitable that things can go awry in any business – but the most important thing is what happens when they do. Such issues need to be resolved quickly and I believe that by having the right caliber of business relationship and people with a can-do attitude, they will be.

From day one, we wished for Core to be a portable and flexible business, providing the opportunity for our team to work from home or whilst travelling on business if they need to. Resolution IT have implemented Microsoft 365 along with a ‘one device’ policy, so things are kept simple for our team and work is securely accessible from anywhere.

Everyone understands the importance of cyber security in the modern world, and it is essential that Core meets the associated regulatory and data protection requirements. The pro-active engagement as well as practical advice and assistance from the security team has been invaluable to us, both in terms of meeting our legal obligations, and demonstrating to our potential target market the robustness of our IT set up.

Core has also engaged Resolution IT for its virtual Chief Information Security Officer (“vCISO”) service which acts as a compliance function on our IT infrastructure and includes regular reports, board-level presentations, and a compliance monitoring program over our IT systems. The great thing about the vCISO role is that it enables Core to evidence how we comply with the requirements, thus providing clients, stakeholders, and our own team members with peace of mind about our underlying systems.

As Core is currently in the start-up phase, the vCISO role required by our business is straightforward. However, our regular interaction with the team at Resolution IT coupled with their vCISO service model means that we can scale the service up as we grow and as our needs and the needs of our stakeholders become more complex.

Worrying about technology solutions is not a good use of Core’s management time – but we must know that it’s being undertaken correctly. We engage and communicate effectively with the Resolution IT team to explain what we need and then rely on them to deliver on these needs or recommend even better ways of achieving the same high-quality outcomes. Their reciprocation of this has been instrumental in making our experience with Resolution IT a success.

Core became regulated by the Guernsey Financial Services Commission in November 2022 and officially opened for business in January 2023 and you can learn more about them by visiting their website here.