On The Line

In this episode, Alice is joined by Jeremy Hocter (Holland Mountain) to explore the seven operational themes he expects to shape 2026 for private capital firms. Building on Holland Mountain’s work across a record year of operational strategy projects, Jeremy shares what he is seeing across the market, why operational leaders are feeling the pressure to do more without adding headcount, and where firms should focus to scale efficiently.

The conversation focuses in on the investor experience, faster data cycles, fund administrator benchmarking, the difference between a data warehouse and a true data platform, business ownership of data, the surge in AI point solutions and governance, and the widening divergence in the fund administration market. Jeremy closes with a clear view on what is most urgent for 2026 and why data platforms now sit at the centre of operational competitiveness.

Key takeaways

• Operational leaders are under pressure to scale without additional headcount, which puts efficiency, process design, and data-enabled workflows at the centre of 2026 priorities.
• Investor experience technology has matured, moving from early adoption to a baseline expectation that will increasingly influence fundraising competitiveness.
• The shift towards more frequent valuations and reporting is being driven by product innovation (evergreen, interval and listed structures), LP expectations, and broader market dynamics like the growth of secondaries.
• Many firms are discovering that legacy fund admin agreements and operating models are misaligned with new demands, making benchmarking and re-scoping relationships more important than ever.
• A data warehouse is infrastructure, not a full data platform. Business value depends on mastering, validation, reconciliation, usability, reporting layers and user adoption.
• Data strategy is becoming a business agenda item, not an IT project, with a growing focus on ownership, self-service and behaviour change.
• AI adoption is accelerating through vertical point solutions. The opportunity is significant, but governance and internal knowledge sharing need to catch up to avoid duplication and wasted spend.
• Fund administration is diverging: some providers are investing in modern tech and automation, while others are constrained by legacy processes and systems.

Private markets is built on performance, but the industry often treats performance as purely output-based: deals closed, returns delivered, targets hit. In this episode, Alice sits down with Emily Cook, founder of FOUND and a certified performance coach, to explore what sits underneath those outcomes: brain health, cognitive performance, and the emerging concept of “brain capital”. Emily shares why measuring brain skills and brain health can help individuals, teams and firms make smarter decisions, reduce burnout risk, and build sustainable high performance in a “do more with less” market.

Key topics covered

• Emily’s journey from finance to performance coaching, and why she became focused on sustainable high performance
• What “brain capital” means and why it matters in private markets
• The two sides of brain capital: brain skills (cognitive capabilities) and brain health (lifestyle pillars)
• Why cognitive ability is assessed at hiring, then rarely discussed again
• Making the invisible visible: clinically validated cognitive testing for performance optimisation
• Why personalisation matters, especially for time-poor professionals
• What changes when firms take a team-wide approach: shared language, reduced taboo, better conversations
• The common pressure points in PE and private credit: sleep, stress, and attention
• How constant interruption and hyper-connectivity erode deep thinking and judgement
• What happens in the brain under overload: prefrontal cortex impairment and an overactive amygdala
• Why brain capital is also a risk management issue for firms and portfolio companies
• Practical starting points: awareness, identifying bottlenecks, and protecting focused time

Practical takeaways for listeners

For individuals

• Treat your brain like a performance asset, not an afterthought.
• Identify your own bottlenecks (sleep, stress, attention, overwhelm) and focus on the highest-leverage changes rather than trying to “do everything”.
• Create a weekly distraction-free block (Emily suggests 60 to 90 minutes) to support deep thinking and higher-value work.

For leaders and teams

• Build shared vocabulary around brain health and performance, so people can speak openly without fear of judgement.
• Look for systemic performance blockers such as meeting culture, constant interruptions, and unsustainable workload expectations.
• Create team-wide protected focus time to improve attention, deep work and decision quality.

For firms

• Consider brain capital as both an optimisation lever and a risk management lens, especially in “do more with less” operating conditions.
• Extend the thinking beyond the fund to portfolio companies: stretched management teams may struggle to execute value creation plans even when strategy is sound.

About the guest

Emily Cook is the founder of FOUND, a performance coaching business working with private equity, private credit and broader financial professional services. Her work focuses on helping individuals and organisations understand, measure and improve brain health and brain performance as a foundation for sustainable high performance.

In this episode of On The Line, Alice speaks to Natalia Ramsden, founder of SOFOS Associates, business psychologist and cognitive performance expert. Natalia’s work sits at the intersection of neuroscience, leadership and organisational performance. She and her team help senior leaders and investment teams understand how their brains function under pressure, how they make decisions, and how they can build greater focus, resilience and clarity.

Using tools such as brain mapping, biomarker analysis and psychological assessment, SOFOS creates development programmes that are grounded in data and tailored to each individual. A growing number of private equity firms are bringing Natalia in to give their leaders a genuine cognitive edge and to support healthier, more sustainable high performance.

In this episode, we cover:

• From leadership consulting to brain optimisation
  How Natalia moved from classic leadership assessment into building SOFOS, and why she wanted to bring medical, health and neuroscience disciplines into executive development.
• What a “brain lab” looks like in practice
  How SOFOS runs its programmes, including brain mapping (EEG), blood work, hormone and neurotransmitter analysis, sleep and heart rate data, and how all of this is pulled together into a personalised development plan.
• From supplements to brainwave training
  The mix of interventions used, from diet, supplements and nootropics through to brainwave training, hyperbaric oxygen and light therapies, and how these are integrated into a very time-poor executive’s life.
• Why private equity leaders are a natural fit
  The competitive, high-intelligence profile of PE professionals, why they are willing to share data in exchange for an edge, and how privacy is managed so individuals own their personal data while firms get high level themes.
• Cognitive efficiency as a competitive advantage
  The difference between rereading a board pack three times versus assimilating it quickly, and how improvements in learning speed, decision-making and mental stamina translate into real commercial advantage.
• What the data is telling us about today’s executives
  Common patterns that show up in brain maps: poor sleep, overactive frontal lobes, being constantly “wired”, flattened stress variability and shrinking attention spans in a world of notifications, shorts and scrolls.
• The role of rest, recovery and time
  How chronic cortisol, lack of proper recovery and our relationship with time are reshaping executive brains, and why rest and deliberate downtime now sit at the centre of sustainable performance.
• How the programmes actually run
  What an engagement looks like day to day: intensive upfront data collection, one-to-one brainwave training and coaching, and lifestyle tweaks around diet, exercise and daily routines that protect sleep and focus.
• Beyond performance: impact on life outside work
  The wider benefits clients report, from having energy left at the end of the week for family life, through to feeling mentally sharper, more emotionally regulated and more present.
• The future: brain gyms in PE firms
  Natalia’s view on where this is heading: HR and L&D functions designing learning curricula around cognitive function, and offices where the physical gym sits next to a brain training set-up.
• Why this matters for private capital firms and LPs
  How optimising the brains behind investment decisions can give firms a new edge, and how it can support their role as fiduciaries by safeguarding and enhancing decision quality over the long term.

In the second instalment with executive coach and former COO Cressida Hamilton, we explore one of the toughest challenges facing finance and operations leaders in private markets: managing time, energy and competing demands in roles that never stop.

Drawing on 26 years in financial services, Cressida offers practical, real life advice for CFOs, COOs and senior ops professionals who want to take back some control of their day. This is a conversation about the real work: dealing with crises, making meetings matter, managing stakeholder demands and designing routines that reduce overload.

If you or your team are regularly stretched, reactive or working into evenings and weekends, this episode will feel highly recognisable and genuinely useful.

In this episode:

Why ops leaders lose so much time
Cressida identifies the two biggest time drains in finance and operations roles: constant crisis management and meeting overload. She explains why both are so difficult to avoid in private markets, and what you can realistically do to reduce their impact.

Handling crises without burning hours
How to stay calm when everything around you is reactive; the importance of asking the right questions before jumping in; why getting the right people on a call matters; and how to update stakeholders without creating more work for yourself.

Making meetings purposeful
Cressida’s simple three question test for any meeting: what do you want, does the other person know that, and what do they want? She sets out how this approach cuts down time wasted and improves alignment across the firm.

Prioritisation in a world where everything is a priority
Why CFOs and COOs struggle to control their own priorities, how to deal with conflicting demands from different stakeholders, and how to bring people together to agree the order of work instead of absorbing all the pressure yourself.

Energy management for senior leaders
How your chronotype shapes your productivity; why matching tasks to your energy is more effective than classic time management; and how small adjustments can lead to significantly better output and less exhaustion.

Time blocking, planning and the Friday reset
Cressida’s preferred approach to structuring a week, why planning becomes more important the busier you are, and the Friday routine that helps reduce overwhelm and avoid the Sunday night dread.

Strategic time management without the jargon
A practical explanation of what it actually means, plus how to run a simple time audit using the urgent/important matrix to understand where your hours really go.

Who this episode is for: CFOs, COOs, finance directors, operations leaders, rising ops talent, and anyone in a high demand support or oversight role within private capital firms.

In this episode, Alice speaks with Seán Allen, Deputy Head of Finance at Coller Capital. Sean joined Coller 13 years ago as a financial analyst and now leads a 60-strong finance function across London and Luxembourg. His career has spanned Coller’s evolution from a single-strategy secondaries house to a diversified platform with credit and private wealth capabilities. 

This conversation delves into what it takes to rise through the ranks inside a modern private markets finance function. Seán shares candid reflections on leadership, influence, internal networks, navigating the shift from peer to manager and the importance of being proactive rather than reactive. The episode is especially relevant for next-generation finance professionals thinking about their own progression. 

Key discussion points 

• Why staying put can sometimes be the power move: how luck, timing and Coller’s growth shaped Seán’s career 
• Leadership loneliness: why senior roles feel isolating and the role of “running mates” in staying sane 
• The jump from peer to manager: awkward transitions, first-time feedback mistakes and building confidence
• How authority is earned: relationships, problem-solving and letting go of technical one-upmanship 
• The modern finance remit: moving beyond operations to influencing strategy, risk and product design 
• Internal and external networks: why visibility across the business is a core part of the job 
• Culture, accountability and feedback: the behavioural traits Coller values when assessing rising talent 
• Proactivity, curiosity and problem-solving: what genuinely moves the needle for promotion 
• A practical piece of advice for juniors: capture the things you want to learn and carve out time to follow through 
• Why the CFO role is far more than “just the numbers” 

Who this episode is for 

Operational leaders, rising finance professionals, and anyone curious about what modern fund finance leadership looks like inside a global secondaries house. 

Head of Legal, Aimee Fabri joins Alice and Malcolm to trace an unconventional career from the Aldi shop floor to leading Oakley Capital’s legal function. She explains why legal belongs at the centre of the firm (not the side lines), how to balance breadth versus depth in-house, the value of “usefulness over perfectionism,” and how to build a tight, trusted network that you can lean on when it counts. 

Episode highlights 

• Legal as an enabler, not a blocker: “We’re not here to say no, we’re here to say stop and think: how do we enable this the right way?” 
• In-house = breadth and judgement: Moving from deep memo-writing to decisive, business-critical calls made in minutes. 
• Healthy pride & healthy tension: Ops/Legal should benchmark outward against the market not against investment teams across the floor. 
• Capacity and sustainability: Boundaries, trusted external counsel, and clear operating models prevent duplication and burnout. 
• Networks that work: Small, reciprocal, “in-the-trenches” relationships beat noisy groups and notification overload. 

Key takeaways 

• Integrate early. Legal adds most value upstream, shaping decisions rather than rubber-stamping. 
• Codify and share. Use legal’s vantage point across deals to spot patterns and reduce friction. 
• Set scope and escalate. Clear operating models and escalation rules protect capacity. 
• Benchmark outward. Take pride in function; compare with market peers, not internal counterparts. 
• Curate your network. Quality, reciprocity and real-world pressure-tested relationships > large noisy groups. 

Deepfakes are no longer the stuff of sci-fi. They’re here, and they’re targeting private capital firms. 

In this episode, Alice Murray is joined by Travis DeForge, Director of Cybersecurity at Abacus Group, to explore how generative AI is supercharging social engineering attacks and what fund managers can do to defend themselves. 

What we cover: 

• What deepfakes are, and why private equity and venture firms are in the firing line 
• Real-world attack scenarios; from cloned CTO voices to successful wire fraud cases 
• How Abacus simulates deepfake attacks to test firms’ defences 
• The biggest blind spots and bad habits when it comes to cyber risk 
• Practical steps CFOs and COOs can take today to protect their firms 
• Why no firm is too small to be targeted 

If you’re a finance or operations leader in private markets, this is essential listening for understanding how fast-moving AI threats are changing the risk landscape, and crucially, how to stay ahead of them. 

In this episode, Alice speaks to Cressida Hamilton, former banking COO and now coach at Chryse Coaching, about why operational leaders in private markets can’t afford to leave their personal brand to chance. 

Drawing on 26 years in financial services and her work as a personal brand and confidence coach (and author of The Art of Self Advocacy), Cressida breaks down: 

• What “personal brand” really means and how it differs from “personal branding” 
• The four pillars that shape your brand: values, skills, competence, and experience 
• Why “letting your work speak for itself” is a myth and what to do instead 
• Three simple, tangible actions to raise your profile inside your firm 
• How to ask for (and get) honest feedback on how you’re perceived 
• The small language shifts that make you sound more visionary, without the cringe factor 
• How to balance ambition with authenticity in different organisational cultures 

Packed with practical tips, relatable stories, and plenty of straight-talking advice, this conversation will help any COO, CFO, or operations professional take control of their reputation and communicate their value with confidence. 

Listen if you want to: 

• Stand out as a value driver in your organisation 
• Build credibility and influence without feeling inauthentic 
• Turn vulnerability into professional strength 

In this episode of On The Line, Alice sits down with high-performance coach Dean Leak, who has worked with Olympic athletes, C-suite executive teams and special forces. Together, they explore the lesser-known traits that underpin sustainable high performance: communication, belonging, clarity, and the ability to handle conflict well. 

Dean shares actionable tools for navigating high-pressure environments, creating space for disagreement, and building trust within teams. This isn’t about being louder or tougher, it’s about being more intentional. 

As Dean puts it: “High performance is ambition times clarity minus distraction.” 

Key topics covered: 

• The myth of the flawless high performer: “Even Rod Stewart said Glastonbury was the most nerve-wracking performance of his life.” 
• Why belonging drives performance: “We don’t often talk about oxytocin when we talk about high performance. But it’s belonging that lets people thrive under pressure.” 
• How to handle conflict with skill: “Every team is dysfunctional. The difference is whether you avoid conflict, escalate it or use it to refine better ideas.” 
• The three pillars of high-performing cultures: Trust, clarity, agency.

“People crave clarity. When there’s a lack of it, they fill the gap with stories, judgments, cynicism.” 

Tools for better conversations: 

• The two-minute mental warm-up 
• Using “tell me more” to open people up 
• Framing disagreement as healthy and necessary 

 “Before a difficult conversation, pause. Ask: What do I want the outcome to be? How do I want to show up?” 

Practical takeaways: 

• Pause before conflict. Prepare your mindset and define your goal. 
• Build trust through curiosity, not control. (“Tell me more.”) 
• Lead with belonging: make people feel seen and heard. 
• Don’t fear disagreement, frame it. “Would you mind if I challenged that perspective?” 
• Reflect regularly on team dynamics, not just deliverables. 

With Bruce Hepburn and Steve Darrington of Mactavish 

In this episode of On The Line, Alice Murray speaks to Bruce Hepburn, CEO and founder of Mactavish, and Steve Darrington, long-time private equity CFO and member of The Line’s Editorial Board, and now also an adviser to Mactavish. 

Together, they dive into why insurance is one of the most overlooked, and potentially dangerous, blind spots in private equity. 

What we cover: 

• How Mactavish evolved from risk analysis for insurers to advising policyholders directly 
• Why most PE firms fail to understand their legal duties on disclosure and how that can leave them dangerously exposed 
• Real-world examples of claims going wrong and why insurance only really matters when it’s tested 
• How PE firms' operating models create unique risks around disclosure, governance, and claims management 
• The rise of large, complex claims and why they’re happening more often than “once in a hundred years” 
• The dangers of “it’ll be fine” thinking in PE, and why risk management is about more than just ticking the insurance box 
• How external shocks, from supply chain disruptions to geopolitical risks, can quickly become direct risks for portfolio companies 
• Why better insurance management is fast becoming a core governance issue for GPs 
• How Mactavish’s new private equity advisory board (featuring industry veterans like Steve) aims to change mindsets across the industry 

 “You only find out you’ve got the wrong insurance when you try and make a claim… and that’s when you’re under the most pressure.” — Steve Darrington 

“It’s systemic: PE firms are time poor, transaction-focused, and they’re not wired to manage low-probability, high-severity risks… until it’s too late.” — Bruce Hepburn 

Listen now for a frank, behind-the-scenes look at risk, resilience, and what PE firms need to change before the worst happens.