This week we are celebrating TWENTY years as a firm, a milestone that fills us with both pride and deep gratitude. Twenty years ago, the Global Investment Performance Standards were evolving rapidly, adoption required courage, and truly independent verification required conviction. From the very beginning, we chose a narrow path on purpose. We committed to a singular mission when it would have been easier to follow the crowd.
That decision has shaped everything that followed and is the reason we stand today as the longest continuously operating, dedicated GIPS verifier in the world, with an uninterrupted, organic history of focus on one discipline and one discipline only: investment performance.
This firm began humbly, just two young professionals building a consultancy side by side while also building a life together. In the earliest days, we traveled to every client and conducted verifications onsite while we racked up the airline miles. Workdays regularly blurred into nights and weekends. Along the way, we also raised two children, who grew up overhearing conversations about composites, disclosures, risk stats, and Standards updates at the dinner table.
Today, it seems our kids know more about GIPS than many finance professionals, a fact that always makes us smile. Like most entrepreneurial families, we navigated work/family schedules, last-minute travel, and the constant tension between being fully present at home while carrying the weight of a growing business. Those years required flexibility, grace, and a deep belief that the work mattered enough to justify the sacrifice. Like many business-owner stories, those early years were not without challenges, which demanded patience, trust, and great fortitude in the face of rejection.
Over the past two decades, we have been privileged to serve more than 100 investment managers, partnering with them through GIPS adoption, change, scrutiny, growth, and renewal. Some of our client relationships span nearly our entire history, a trust earned slowly through consistency, independence, and technical rigor. That continuity means everything to us. It reflects not only longevity, but stewardship, accountability, and relationships built carefully over time.
Along the way, the journey has taken us farther than we ever imagined. We have loved being part of the global investment performance community, building friendships around the world, serving on CFA Institute initiatives, and contributing to CFA Society leadership.
While the industry has experienced consolidation and expanding conflicts of interest, Absolute Performance Verification has remained a singular, organic entity. One hundred percent of our intellectual capital remains focused on the evolution and application of the GIPS standards, delivering a level of depth and precision that others simply cannot replicate.
Most of all, we are grateful. Grateful for this opportunity, and grateful to our clients, past, present, and future. Grateful for our peers, and for the community that has shaped and sharpened us along the way.
Here is to 20 years of more excellence, integrity, and enthusiasm for what comes next!