Since 1st September 2025, Dutch asset manager OHV has offered daily Net Asset Values (NAVs) for its ‘Fresh Dutch SME Fund’, a private debt fund launched in 2021. These daily NAVs makes it easier for investors to trade in this traditionally more illiquid strategy and the fund’s open-ended structure permits investors to buy in or exit at any stage. The complex fund accounting to produce the fund’s daily NAV is performed by CACEIS’s private asset experts.
Funds containing illiquid investments such as private debt instruments are normally ‘closed-ended’ - raising a fixed amount of capital during their fundraising period, after which they close to new investors and operate for a set duration, often ten years. With this new fund, OHV brings investors a unique proposition which offers greater trading flexibility for a traditionally illiquid private debt strategy.
Erik Bakker, OHV Director
We asked OHV Director, Erik Bakker a series of questions about the business, the fund and their group’s relationship with CACEIS which we have provided below.
Could you give us a quick overview of OHV’s current relationship with CACEIS and why this fund is noteworthy?
Our business relationship with CACEIS goes beyond the technology and fund accounting aspects – we have developed a strong trust-based partnership where we pool our expertise to enhance investor value. For the fund, by offering daily-tradable units for traditionally illiquid instruments within an open-ended fund, we’re opening up the investment strategy to a broader market, including institutional investors, asset managers, family offices and even retail investors.
What drove OHV to create this new type of private debt fund?
Before the Euro was introduced our main business was actually in the private loans sector, but afterwards there was a downturn in that market as Dutch investors looked to European debt and the liquid pan-European Euro-denominated Government and Corporate bond markets emerged. However, the combination of the credit crisis and the low interest rate environment around 2009 led investors to seek higher yields elsewhere, which reinvigorated the market for illiquid investments.
The combination of our long-standing expertise in the private debt market combined and a desire to open up the sector’s investment-diversifying asset class to a broader range of investors led us to design and launch our innovative, open-ended, and now daily-tradable ’Fresh Dutch SME fund’.
Which investor category is the fund designed to suit?
Our fund is designed to suit a wide variety of investor types, from large institutional investors to retail investors. Private debt instruments are not directly linked to equity markets and can provide a key source of investment diversification to help smooth out performance in volatile markets. Capital invested into a closed-end fund is often locked away for long periods and sometimes subject to high minimum investments so this open-ended fund not only provides smaller investors access to a private debt investment strategy, but also makes that strategy more liquid by enabling investors to purchase or redeem units at a daily NAV price. We believe this is an exciting and innovative investment opportunity for all types of investors.
How long has your partnership with CACEIS been active?
I have worked at OHV for a long time and our group has worked in close partnership with CACEIS and its predecessor Kas Bank for all that time. When Kas Bank operated an independent treasury function, OHV executed its own orders for various types of fixed-income instruments but then CACEIS took over all settlement tasks for us in relation to bond trading. CACEIS has also become our principal custodian for our wider private and institutional asset management business, and today, we use a broad selection of additional products and services from the group’s ever-expanding range.
What were the reasons behind your decision to maintain a commitment to CACEIS as your servicing partner?
CACEIS offers very modular and customisable servicing packages compared to other providers on the market. This enables us to create a tailored service package for OHV as we still retain various aspects of our investor relations servicing in-house, such as order execution and customised reporting. Most other depositaries only offer a standardised ‘all-in’ service package where investment managers and their investors end up having to pay for redundant services.
OHV uses CACEIS’s custody, depositary, fund accounting, financial accounting, registrar and transfer agency services, while generating and filing reports for the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) and the Central Bank of the Netherlands (AIFMD, MESRAP and MER). CACEIS also assists in drafting our key investor information documents and provides essential support for regulatory compliance matters along with input on the design of efficient investment fund structures.
