Techwork 2022: Juri Pervjakov, BaltCap

Experience

Pervjakov started his career following a finance path, as noted by his earlier roles. These  included senior consultant at EY (2005-10), audit methodology and continuing professional  education specialist at the Estonian Association of Auditors (2010-11) as well as controller, budgeting and HQ reporting (2011 - 2012) and treasury supervisor/risk manager (2011 - 2016) at Oy Teboil.

With financial experience under his belt, Pervjakov joined BaltCap in 2016. “I initially joined as finance director, but my position evolved to become finance and administrative director, then we incorporated technology into my role last summer,” he says. “It makes sense to not only be involved with the numbers, but also how the numbers develop by streamlining and automating processes. Technology compliments what I’m doing very well.”

Achievements

Despite technology only being officially recognised in his title since 2021, Pervjakov says he’s spent lots of time over the past six years optimising investor reporting. “We began with eFront’s standard reporting package, but it wasn’t flexible enough for what we needed,” he says. “We wanted more customisation that would enable us to take data from our eFront database, for example, and export it into Microsoft Word to produce readable reports. So we worked with our IT partners to create our own data warehouse.”

Over the past year, Pervjakov and his team have implemented eFront’s investor portal. “It made operations more efficient because investors can access various documents anytime. It significantly improved our drawdowns and distributions processes. From feedback we’ve had, most of our investors are happy with the new setup.”

While BaltCap uses eFront’s PEO/VC platform across its internal functions, Pervjakov explains this might change in the future. “It’s being phased out because eFront’s sister platform, eFront Invest, does practically the same thing. In the future we’ll likely transition to the Invest platform, or try something new.”

Furthermore, BaltCap recently signed a deal with WorldFavour to collect ESG information from its portfolio companies. “We thought about having a universal system to collect all data types, but we decided to go with this dedicated platform. WorldFavour can add value with their ESG experience, meaning not only can they help us to collect data, they can also advise us on what data we should be collecting.”

As a wider, more long-term project, Pervjakov is focusing on the future of the back office functions. “We’ve been growing a lot the last few years, so we’re already thinking about our next two or three funds and considering new strategies,” he says. “With increasing workloads, we’ve had to consider the new role of the back office, how to streamline processes and automate workflows. Lots of our tasks are around checking whether things are done, rather than if they’ve been done correctly, which is where we want to be.”

His second key focus is cyber security. “We’ve been working with an IT company that manages our IT infrastructure over the last six months,” he says. “Having completed our information system risk assessment, we’ve identified areas we need to improve, but it’s a continual work in progress.”