Celebrating Five Years of Peer Collaboration

Hi, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Peer Connections, the podcast series brought to you by the Global Peer Financing Association, also known as GPFA. These podcasts offer our GPFA members and global beneficial owner friends a forum for information sharing and discussion on topics most important to them. And we hope you, our listeners, appreciate the insights, best practices, and transparency offered from our members and industry friends about securities, finance, or related investment areas. Now let's get into the episode. Hello, listeners. Welcome back to another episode of GPFA's Peer Connections Podcast. I am Brooke Gilman and will be your host for today's conversation. I'm coming to you in my volunteer capacity, supporting the GPFA as secretary to the association in support of the work that the GPFA board does. It's been a minute or two since GPFA last podcasted, but it's been worth the wait because we have a big one today. And today we have four of our GPFA members. And I would say sort of the OG4, which are the founding board members of the GPFA with us. And they're pretty excited to get together and to share some GPFA highlights and updates, but most importantly, to celebrate what is a pretty big milestone for this group and association, which is the fifth year anniversary that was held last year in 2025. It's taken us a little bit of time to get together and get everyone on the same schedule to record this podcast, but I'm very excited to have you all here. So maybe we can go around the virtual room here and start with the godfather of GPFA, Mr. Rob Gooby, just to introduce yourself and we'll go around the room. Thank you, Brooke. I'm Robert Gooby from the Healthcare for Ontario Pension Plan. I'm the Senior Managing Director of Balance Sheets and Liquidity Management. I'm also the Chair of the GPFA. And Chris, over to you. Why don't you introduce yourself. Thanks, Brooke. I'm Chris Benesch. I'm a Senior Portfolio Manager here at State of Wisconsin Investment Board and proud board member of the GPFA. Been with the group since the beginning and looking forward to reflecting back on five years. Perfect. And Mr. Jerry May from Ohio, over to you for an introduction. I'm Jerry May from Ohio PERS, Senior Portfolio Manager here in charge of cash and securities lending. And also similar to Chris, founding board member here since the beginning. And it's been quite the journey and looks like it's going to be just as exciting as ever as we move forward. So looking forward to it. All right. And Mr. Johnson from CalPERS. Yeah, thanks, Brooke. Mike Johnson, investment manager at the California Public Employees Retirement System. I am not an OG board member. I filled in for my predecessor a few years ago, so I've only been on the board for four years now. So four years, a board member, We're very proud of what we've accomplished in my time here. I've been involved from the get-go, but very proud to be a part of this association. I think of you as pretty OG, Mike. So don't undersell yourself, please. Yeah. Technically, no, I wasn't listed as a board member, but yeah, I've been involved from the get-go. You've been with it from the outset. Absolutely. I think 22 officially became a member. So I'm the new guy on the board. Perfect. Good. Okay. Okay. So Rob, you really had the vision behind what became GPFA. And can you just give everyone for the benefit of those listeners that aren't intimately familiar with how it grew up and how it became a group of the four pensions that you're hearing from today, getting together and establishing this not-for-profit business association for the betterment of the securities financing industry for the buy side? Yeah, sure. I mean, I've been in the industry for 30 years or so. I spent the first 15 years of my career in the back office and the last 17 years plus in the investment management area. My first conference I attended was back in 2008. It was a beneficial conference. I met most of the guys here in the pod today. And we've been meeting ever since every year. And we said we have the conversation. And then we left the conversation and never pick it up. And after about seven years of connecting and looking back at discussions we had and haven't seen progress, I thought it was a good idea for us to get together and form an association so we could continue the discussion. The idea was to bring all the buy side together, beneficial owners together, so we could work as a team for the betterment of the industry itself. Thanks, Rob. And so knowing that that was the original thought and vision behind it. Maybe Chris Benes, you can help take our listeners from that moment to perhaps where we are today. And how has the thought and the mission and the value proposition of the association evolved over the last five years for the membership? It's funny, Brooke, as I was thinking about this recording coming up and reflecting back on not just the last five years, but for me, the last 19 years, right? I haven't been in the industry as long as Rob, but I remember that conference back in 2008. I remember sitting down with this very excited, dynamic guy named Rob Gooby, who was showing me all sorts of amazing things that they were building at Hoop. The excitement was contagious and it was a great conversation. And it bled into the beneficial owner closed door discussion that was had at that conference. And when it was all over, there was sort of something missing, right? We wanted to keep that energy going. Fast forward several years, as Rob said, when the opportunity came to start connecting on a more regular basis, for me, it was a no-brainer. I jumped at it. And I've been a big believer in this kind of network effect ever since. And so after a number of years of connecting through conference calls on a quarterly basis and then a monthly basis, a number of us came together to say, hey what if we did some trades with each other it was a novel idea at the time it was something that we hadn't really solved for previously and to me that's really kind of the origin story of the gpfa is sitting on those calls month after month