Bain Capital Credit is a leading global credit specialist managing approximately $60 billion in assets across the full spectrum of credit strategies, from leveraged loans and high-yield bonds to private credit and structured products.
We spoke to Director Ryan Connelly about the firm’s quest for an operational infrastructure that matches the sophistication and scale of the business, and the role of reconciliation automation in achieving their strategic vision.
Empowering Ops to scale through reconciliation automation
Bain Capital Credit's previous reconciliation environment had limitations in agility and flexibility. These constraints became increasingly apparent as the firm expanded across a wide range of products, asset classes, and custodians.
“Files arrive from custodians in different formats, and every asset class and strategy carries its own nuances. A generic reconciliation tool simply wasn’t going to work for us. We needed something that could be tailored to the specific characteristics of each data source and process.”
Bain Capital Credit previously relied on manual matching, which consumed significant team capacity and limited the time available for value-added exception research and risk analysis.
“We needed a platform we could control and configure to fit our business: one that gave us the ability to identify patterns in the data and build intelligent logic around them. That’s what drives systematic automation and ultimately redirects our team’s capacity toward the work that delivers real operational value.”
Connelly explained that Bain Capital Credit is constantly prioritising initiatives that drive sustainable growth. New funds, new strategies, and increasing complexity demand an operating model that can keep pace.
“Our decision to adopt Duco was driven by a desire to build a reconciliation and controls infrastructure that scales intelligently with the business, maintains a consistently high output standard, and gives our team the tools to perform at their best.”
Picking the right partner
For Connelly, the goal wasn’t simply to replace a piece of software, it was to find the right long-term partner. “A technology transition of this magnitude is a significant undertaking. We weren’t looking for a vendor; we were looking for a partner who could grow with us.”
Duco’s established presence among buy-side firms managing complex asset classes, including private credit, gave Bain Capital Credit the confidence to explore the platform further.
“The depth of preparation Duco brought to the evaluation process was impressive. Their team engaged thoughtfully with our specific requirements, and demonstrated a genuine understanding of the complexity of our business.”
“The next day, they demonstrated live how the platform could meet our needs, using our own data and the specific scenarios we had raised. This gave us real confidence. It wasn’t a generic product demo; it was a direct response to our requirements.”
In addition to its current capabilities, Bain Capital Credit was also focused on finding a partner with a clear product vision that aligned where the platform is headed operationally and technologically.
“The agentic AI roadmap Duco presented was a genuine differentiator in our evaluation. "It confirmed that they are thinking about operating models that don't just scale, but continuously learn and improve."
Migrating reconciliations and enabling the team
Migrating a significant number of funds and custodians onto the Duco platform was a significant undertaking and was completed in six months.
Ryan shared that Bain Capital Credit took a phased approach, leveraging the expertise of our Professional Services team to get this started.
“Duco’s Professional Services team handled the build for the first two months of the project,” he explained, adding that Professional Services simultaneously trained Bain Capital Credit’s team on how to build their own processes. Due to the ease-of-use of the Duco platform this meant that, after just a few weeks, Bain Capital Credit’s team were able to take the lead. “During the next two months, we drove the build, with Professional Services providing support where needed.”
“The platform is genuinely intuitive. Once the team understood the core navigation, they were able to move quickly beyond the basics and onto exploring capabilities and connecting Duco into different parts of our business in ways that continue to add value.”
Duco’s Training and Enablement team were vital in getting the firm’s 50-plus users up and running on the platform through a combination on on-site visits and an extensive library of training materials.
“Onboarding a platform of this capability across a global team can be a significant undertaking. Duco’s structured training approach accelerated adoption, built genuine user confidence, and ensured that our teams were not just using the tool but using it well. That investment in enablement has had a direct impact on the quality and consistency of how the platform is applied across the organisation.”
The results: Match rates surge, insights unlocked, team freed to add value
As a result of Duco’s proprietary matching algorithm and flexible no-code platform, Bain Capital Credit have seen a significant jump in automatch rates. As Connelly explained:
“Across our counterparties, automatch rates are now comfortably beyond 80%, and in the 90s versus multiple custodians. Against some counterparties with particularly nuanced data, we’ve increased match rates 4x.”
“As long as we can identify a repeatable theme in the data, we can build intelligent logic around it. That’s what drives meaningful increases in automation. The platform gives us the ability to engineer airtight matching rules that consistently deliver high auto-match rates, even where data complexity varies across counterparties.”
Bain Capital Credit’s team can now identify, test, and deploy simple tweaks into production within a day or two. More complex updates may take just a week.
“Duco has given us a level of control and agility that has fundamentally changed how we operate. The ability to design, test, and deploy new processes quickly means we can respond to business needs in real time. Standing up new controls and getting to market is faster than was previously possible.”
All this means that Bain Capital Credit has achieved their vision of a scalable, adaptable Operations function. The firm can scale safely in the knowledge that their control framework can keep up with the extra data demands.
“As we have expanded across strategies and geographies, we needed a platform that could absorb that complexity without requiring proportional increases in manual effort or headcount. Duco has been central to achieving that. The platform’s flexibility has allowed us to design and deploy reconciliation controls quickly, adapt to new products and counterparties as they come on board, and maintain a consistently high standard of operational output across the business.”
Beyond the team efficiency gains, Bain Capital Credit has built a centralised data ecosystem with Duco at the foundation, providing a trusted golden source for reconciliation and control data. Power BI and other visualisation tools sit on top, enabling management dashboards, automated reporting, and advanced operational metrics that have transformed how the business monitors performance and risk.
“The advanced operational metrics we have unlocked with Duco have materially improved how leadership monitors performance and risk. Our teams have real-time access to a consistent, trusted view of the business. That visibility translates directly into faster, more confident decision-making at every level of the organisation. Critically, it gives our teams the clarity to prioritise effectively, structure their day, and direct their attention to the highest-impact issues without ambiguity.”
“As Duco has increased automation, our staff has been able to direct more energy toward true exception resolution, risk prioritisation, and root cause analysis, driving real operational value.”
The cumulative impact across automation, visibility, and agility has been a fundamental shift in how the Operations team operates, moving from a function focused on data assembly to one focused on analysis, risk management, and decision support.
The future
For Bain Capital Credit, the adoption of Duco has been more than a technology decision. It has been a foundational step in building an Operations function that is scalable, transparent, and built for the long term.
The firm’s drive for excellence continues, and Connelly is excited to see how Duco’s agentic AI capabilities will empower Bain Capital Credit to unlock even greater efficiencies.
“We came into this looking for a platform that could grow with us: one that gave our team the tools to operate at a higher level, make better decisions, and respond to the business with speed and confidence. That’s exactly what we’ve built. Looking ahead, the potential of Duco’s agentic AI capabilities is something we’re genuinely excited to explore. The prospect of an operating model that continuously learns and improves is a compelling next chapter for us.”