RT1: AI and the Next Generation: Are You Training Juniors or Replacing Them?

• Junior staff are already leaning on AI to get answers. Is that eroding real technical depth, or just how the job works now?
• If AI absorbs the process work, what trains the next generation of CFOs and COOs?
• Should firms hire fewer juniors and more senior operators, or does that break the pipeline entirely?
• What does the analyst- to-partner career path look like in five years?
  

RT2: The Cost of AI: How Are Funds Tracking Token Usage and the ROI?

Hosted by Evgenia Clark, Global Data Lead, BC Partners

• Token costs stay flat while usage keeps climbing; is your blended AI spend rising faster than headcount ever did?
• Are your service providers passing on their own AI efficiency gains, or just quietly protecting margin?
• What's the honest budget-per-seat for AI right now, and who's measuring it?
• At what point does "unlimited" usage become a cost problem rather than a productivity win?
  

RT3: Who Owns Your AI Risk? Model Dependency and Data Sovereignty 

• Do you have a real AI policy and committee, or just a Slack channel and good intentions?
• Almost every major model comes from a small handful of US providers
• What happens to your firm if one of them pulls a product overnight?
• Data sovereignty and export risk: how seriously is your firm really taking this?
• Whose job is it to own AI risk - finance, IT, compliance, or nobody yet?
  

RT4: AI Build vs Buy: Now You Can Build Almost Anything, So What Should You Actually Build?

Hosted by Richie Barter, Commercial Director, Rational Partners

• AI has made in-house builds cheap enough to compete with off-the- shelf software - When does that make sense?
• What's the real maintenance cost of something you built yourself, twelve months from now?
• Which fund functions are safe to build in- house, and which still need a specialist vendor?
• Has anyone replaced a paid platform with something built internally, and did it work?
  

RT5: AI Governance at Scale: What Worked as a Pilot Won't Work as Policy 

• If everyone in the firm is using AI, who's monitoring how, and catching the uses that create real risk?
• How do you encourage genuinely valuable use of AI without opening the door to shadow tools nobody's tracking?
• How do you keep AI governance genuinely current, not just filed away?
• Where does human sign-off need to sit, and where are you being too cautious, or not cautious enough?
  

RT1: Continuation Vehicles: Real Alignment, or Just a Way to Keep the Trophy Assets?

• Do continuation vehicles deliver alignment between LPs and GPs, or do they just let GPs hold on to the assets they don't want to let go of?
• Are CVs still effectively reserved for trophy assets, or is that starting to change?
• How are these deals being financed now, and who's providing that capital?
• When alignment breaks down in a CV process, where does it go wrong?
  

RT2: NAV Financing: What It Really Costs, and How Lenders Actually Value Your Portfolio

• Where does NAV financing genuinely solve a problem, rather than just buy you time?
• What's the true all-in cost once fees, covenants and reduced flexibility are priced in, not just the headline rate?
• What do lenders actually look for when they value your portfolio, and where does that diverge from your own marks?
• How exposed is your fund to a single lending relationship, and does that concern you?
  

RT3: End of Life Funds: What Do You Do When Your Fund Has Nothing Left to Sell?

Hosted by Paul Bramley, Director & Former CFO, Claret Capital

• How do you release final liquidity from a fund that's mostly liquidated, without dragging the audit out for another two years?
• What's the realistic, cost-efficient way to manage a rump of low- value assets nobody wants to buy?
• At what point do you tell LPs it's time to stop waiting for a better outcome?
• What would you build into a fund's documentation at launch to make this easier a decade later?
  

RT4: GP Stakes, GP Commit and Retail Money: Where Is Your Next Pound Coming From?

• Is GP-level financing (GP commit, GP stakes) now a genuine capital strategy, or a sign the traditional route has stalled?
• Retailisation is opening private funds to a much wider investor base - is that a realistic source of capital for a fund like yours?
• What's the cost- effective way to access retail distribution without building the infrastructure yourself?
• If your anchor LP walked away tomorrow, where would your next cheque come from?
  

RT5: Beyond DPI: Which Performance Metrics Actually Matter Now? 

• DPI has become the metric everyone obsesses over, Is that fair, or is it crowding out other numbers that matter.
• Is any DPI now being treated as good DPI, even when it comes from NAV financing or a continuation vehicle rather than a genuine exit?
• Which other metrics are LPs actually asking harder questions about, beyond the headline IRR and TVPI?
• If you could only report one number to prove your fund's real performance, which would it be, and why isn't it DPI?
  

Masterclass 1: How Do You Really Compare? The Data on Pay, Movement and Demand

Hosted by Khuram Bajwa, Director, One Ten Associates Ltd 

• First-time CFO and COO hires have been increasing YoY - What does that shift actually say about where the real talent gap is?
• Compensation is rising, but not evenly. Where is pay actually moving fastest right now, and where has it gone flat?
• PE backers are increasingly willing to swap out a CFO or COO mid-hold. What's driving that, and how exposed are you personally?
• How do you really compare on pay, tenure and mobility against the room you're actually sitting in, not the market in general?
  

Masterclass 2 - Cybersecurity in Plain English: What You Need to Know 

• Nearly 70% of firms say cyber incidents are rising through the hold period, with an average loss of over $2 million per incident - does your firm know its real exposure?
• What do terms like credential stuffing, lateral movement or AI-generated exploits mean for you in practice?
• AI is now cutting the time to build a working exploit to a matter of hours - What does that change about how quickly you need to respond?
• What's the realistic minimum every CFO or COO should personally understand, without needing to become an engineer?
  

Masterclass 3: Handing Over the Keys: What Really Happens When a CFO or COO Leaves and How Should You Succession Plan?

Hosted by Raj Shah, CFO and Operating Partner, Claret Capital

• Most CFOs and COOs stay a decade or more. What happens to a fund when that person finally leaves?
• What did a real handover involve, what worked, and what would they do differently?
• How do founders manage key-person risk when one individual has held the entire operational picture for years?
• What should be built into succession planning now, long before anyone is thinking of leaving?
  

Boardroom 1 - The Next-Gen Table: What Retention Really Costs You

• What does it cost in rehiring, retraining and lost institutional knowledge when a strong mid-level operator walks?
• Does carried interest still mean anything to the people sitting at this table, or has base salary quietly taken over?
• What's the alternative to moving sideways to a bigger fund, and is anyone offering it?
  

Boardroom 2 - How Many Providers Are Too Many? A Concentration Risk Reality Check 

• Over 80% of firms expect to deepen reliance on external providers, but only the ones with integrated infrastructure
• Is your stack integrated, or fragmented across several vendors?
• What's the real risk if one of your core providers has a bad year, or a bad breach? - Close to half of private markets staff time is lost to reconciling fund admin data across providers
• Is that happening to you right now? - If you mapped your full provider stack today, what would surprise you?
  

Boardroom 3 - The Valuations Checklist Nobody Actually Gives You 

• The IPEV guidelines have just been updated for the first time since 2022, with new rules on complex instruments and the use of AI in valuations - What changes for you?
• Where does interpretation genuinely differ firm to firm, and where are you exposed?
• What would a genuine best-practice checklist look like, beyond "follow the guidelines"?
• What are auditors and regulators pushing hardest on right now?