Leafwood is a fractional COO practice led by a former Managing Director and Head of Operations at a specialty finance firm. We take the operational weight off the founders and principals of Connecticut financial firms, and build the routines that hold up as the firm grows.
Founders running the firm and the portfolio, and the back office on the side.
Fee billing, vendor due diligence, onboarding, books-and-records housekeeping, and reporting tend to land on the principal. We take them over and put them on a calendar with a named owner.
Growth that outruns the workflow underneath it.
Origination handoffs, servicing queues, third-party vendors, and month-end reporting all need a documented path. We map how it really works, then rebuild it so it scales.
Regulated work with a small team.
The obligations are real and the team is lean. We make sure the operating routines behind them are written down, assigned, and followed, in step with your compliance officer or counsel.
A current inventory, a review cadence, and evidence that it happened.
Contracts, renewals, due-diligence files, and service-level follow-up, kept in one place instead of in someone's inbox.
Deadlines, renewals, and reviews with an owner and a date.
Recurring filings, certifications, policy reviews, and internal attestations tracked and chased, so nothing depends on one person remembering.
Repeatable workflows for the work that happens every week.
Client and counterparty onboarding checklists, reconciliations, fee and billing runs, and the month-end close, documented and trained.
What happens when the one person who knows is out.
Written runbooks, backup owners, and a tested continuity plan, so the firm keeps operating through an absence or a surprise.
Connecticut has a deep concentration of financial firms, from asset managers and lenders in Fairfield County to insurance and wealth management firms across the state. Many of them are small, founder-led, and stretched: the principal who brings in the revenue is also the person chasing vendors, tracking deadlines, and fixing process gaps.
Andrew Clark has three decades in operations and capital markets, most recently as Managing Director and Head of Operations at Nearwater Capital, a specialty finance firm, and earlier building operating infrastructure at UBS and MF Global. He works directly with you, with no account managers and no hand-offs.
Leafwood provides operations leadership. It does not provide legal, compliance, tax, or investment advice, and works alongside your counsel and compliance officer.
A fractional COO takes ownership of the operating side of the firm on a part-time, ongoing basis. For financial services firms that typically means vendor and third-party oversight, tracking the operational calendar of filings, renewals and reviews, client onboarding and servicing workflows, reconciliations and reporting, and business continuity planning. The goal is a firm that runs on documented process instead of on the memory of one or two principals.
No. Leafwood provides operations leadership, not legal, compliance, tax, or investment advice. We work alongside your compliance officer, consultant, or counsel, making sure the processes they require are actually documented, assigned, and followed day to day.
Small and mid-sized financial services firms, including investment advisers and boutique asset managers, specialty finance companies and lenders, and other regulated firms such as brokerages, mortgage firms, and insurance agencies. The common thread is a founder or principal who is still the operational bottleneck.
A full-time COO is a six-figure fixed commitment that many firms are not ready for. A consultant usually delivers a report and leaves. A fractional COO is embedded in the firm for a set number of hours each week and stays through implementation, so the processes get built, adopted, and maintained.
Fractional COO engagements typically range from about $150 to $400 an hour, or $10,000 to $25,000 a month for an ongoing retainer, depending on scope and weekly hours. Book an intro call for a quote specific to your firm.
Engagements are scoped per firm, and can combine in-person time with remote work. Tell us where your team is and what you need on the intro call.
Running a Connecticut financial firm and tired of being the bottleneck? Let's talk.
Book an intro call