Tax & Financial Services · Mutual Fund Compliance
Locking One Figure Closed a $40M Exposure and Frees Up to $1M a Cycle
A global professional services firm administering 50-plus Regulated Investment Company (RIC) funds calculated compliance by hand in editable Excel workbooks. We built an auditable, approval-driven application that locks each final figure. Calculations that took weeks now run same-day, freeing up to $1M in senior time every cycle.
$40MExcise exposure removed on a $1B fund$1M+Senior tax time freed per cycle, portfolio-wide
50+RIC funds on one locked, auditable workflowThe Challenge
Senior tax professionals calculated complex mutual fund compliance figures by hand in Excel, across dozens of funds, with no formal approval process. Each excise cycle ran 20 to 40 hours per fund of senior time, billed at up to $500 an hour. The portfolio spans more than 50 RIC funds, so that cost mounted every cycle. The workbooks were editable. A single miscalculation could trigger the 4% excise tax under Internal Revenue Code Section 4982, a $40M exposure on a $1B fund, leaving the filing one unauthorized change away from being wrong. No amount of review fully closed that gap. Senior people spent hours re-checking spreadsheets they could never fully trust.
What We Did
We started with the core compliance calculations, automating them alongside document coordination and analytics. That gave the firm one place where the numbers were produced the same way every time, instead of dozens of separate workbooks maintained by hand across the fund portfolio. We then added an excise tax module with an approval workflow that locks taxable income once it is signed off, followed by what-if analysis and roll-forward features, so the team can model scenarios for ongoing fund management.
The Solution
A compliance application now runs the core Subchapter M calculations and locks each final figure behind an approval workflow. Work that took weeks completes same-day. Scenario planning and roll-forward views sit alongside it, covering more than 50 RIC funds on one auditable workflow.
The Outcome
Across the 50-plus fund portfolio, locking the calculations frees $400K to more than $1M in senior time every cycle. The $40M excise exposure on a $1B fund is removed rather than saved as cash: the figures are now locked and auditable. The freed capacity belongs to senior tax professionals. Instead of rebuilding spreadsheets and re-checking them, they take on more RIC engagements without the firm adding headcount, and the filed figures no longer depend on nobody having edited the wrong cell.
Related cases
Same-Day Answers Protected a $10M-Plus Contract Renewal
A Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) with $10M-plus enterprise contracts had a data warehouse, but Finance still waited 3 to 6 business days for every client answer. We built a self-service data mart with pre-built queries. Answers now come same-day, protecting a contract where slow reporting had put renewal at risk.
One Data Foundation, Three Use Cases, About $7.4M a Year
A Fortune 500 automotive aftermarket retailer replaced legacy platforms costing about $2M a year in licensing, then built catalog, customer and fleet intelligence on the new foundation. About $7.4M a year, with $1M already banked.
This Practice Now Earns an Estimated $6M a Year More With No Added Headcount
A tax practice managing global mobility compliance for two multinational workforces of 500-plus worked reactively from spreadsheets and email. We built an end-to-end platform spanning pre-travel risk scoring, GPS tracking and unified reporting. Billable revenue rose 20%, an estimated $6M a year across two enterprise accounts.
Still calculating fund compliance by hand in editable spreadsheets?
This is our world. Noblq is the largest specialist tax technology firm outside the Big Four, and builds the most complex tax platforms for two of them. You won't have to teach us your business, so we de-risk delivery from day one, and our proven frameworks and accelerators deliver higher return from the start. Let's turn your hardest tax challenge into a reliable, scalable system.