The Private Fund Compliance Operations Forum will bring private-market compliance, legal, finance and operations leaders to New York on December 1–2, 2026. PEI's conference takes place at Convene, 360 Madison Avenue, with a program connecting AI oversight, regulatory examinations and the daily work of keeping a fund's controls functioning.
The gathering addresses a familiar organizational difficulty: a technology decision can move through several departments while responsibility for its consequences becomes harder to trace. For fund operators and the technology companies selling into their workflows, the December discussions offer a chance to examine those handoffs before bringing another system, policy or provider into the firm.
The forum is aimed at CCOs, CFOs, COOs, general counsel and senior professionals responsible for compliance and fund operations. Its published agenda joins technology oversight with valuation, recordkeeping, fees and expenses, cybersecurity and private credit. Those subjects meet inside the same institution, even when they sit under different reporting lines.
Consider a fund evaluating an AI-enabled service. An investment team may want speed, finance may want a manageable cost, IT may need to understand access, and compliance may need to follow the resulting communications. That is an illustrative operating problem, and it helps explain the agenda's breadth. A capable product still enters a chain of human decisions about permissions, review, retention and escalation.
The conference's value for an operator could lie in comparing that chain with peers who organize it differently. A useful conversation can expose a missing owner or a cumbersome approval step without requiring a grand announcement. The practical question is how an institution keeps enough visibility into a workflow to explain it when circumstances change.
The organizer's current speaker roster includes Maurya Crawford Keating, Associate Regional Director of the SEC's New York Regional Office, for a keynote interview. Nicholas Hemmingsen, Partner in Kirkland & Ellis' Investment Funds Practice Group, is listed as moderator. The scheduled conversation gives attendees a regulatory perspective to place beside their own operational questions; its substance will depend on what is actually discussed in December.
The SEC's Fiscal Year 2026 Examination Priorities provide dated context for that discussion. The staff document describes attention to the implementation of adviser compliance programs, valuation and disclosures, alongside technology supervision and operational resilience. It is staff guidance rather than a new rule, and the scope of an examination depends on the firm and its activities.
Christopher Banks, Managing Director and Global Head of Compliance at Pantheon, is listed for roundtables. Michelle Ball, Co-Head of Private Equity Compliance at Vista Equity Partners, and Brian Privor, Managing Director in Legal & Compliance at Blackstone, appear in the day-2 think-tank programming. Their relevance comes from the operating perspectives represented in the program, without assuming that any participant's method transfers neatly to every fund.
Thomas Stewart, co-founder and CEO of Hadrius, is scheduled to moderate a discussion about AI's effect on compliance teams and their workflows. The subject puts staffing and judgment alongside automation. If software takes over a repetitive task, the institution still has to decide how an exception reaches a reviewer and how that review becomes part of the retained record.
That connection matters to a compliance technology founder as much as to the buyer. A demonstration can show a feature working in isolation; the buyer's organization has to live with the permissions, training and follow-up around it. Questions about data access, review responsibility and retrieval belong in the commercial conversation because they influence how a system can fit into the firm's existing work.
The event-specific sponsor page lists Ontra, Kirkland & Ellis and Drawbridge as lead sponsors, with Hadrius, Greenboard, Fellow: AI and Comply also sponsoring. The mix brings legal services and technology providers into the event's commercial setting. Sponsorship establishes a relationship to this conference, rather than evidence that a product delivers a particular compliance outcome.
The program includes peer roundtables and a networking reception, as well as GP-only closed-door think tanks. The restricted sessions exclude media, vendors and service providers. That distinction should shape a participant's meeting plan: a technology seller and a fund compliance executive may attend the same conference while having access to different conversations.
The Private Funds CFO Network offering separately describes personalized introductions and a member directory. Those services should be understood as membership benefits, rather than assumed inclusions with every conference ticket. The distinction makes the practical networking proposition clearer and keeps an attendee from building a plan around access that has not been confirmed.
For a senior operator, a focused peer conversation can be more useful than collecting a long list of contacts. Bringing a concrete question about a supplier review or a records handoff gives the exchange something to work on. Any resulting benefit will depend on the discussion and the follow-through; the conference has yet to occur.
The official venue details identify Convene at 360 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10017. Both agenda days list registration and breakfast beginning at 08:00, without an explicit timezone on the published page. Attendees should confirm their schedule and ticket details through the organizer before making final plans.
The organizer's FAQ says single-day passes are unavailable and session recordings will not be provided after the event. Readers can follow the registration link from the official event site. Those logistics favor choosing the relevant discussions in advance rather than assuming the entire program can be revisited later.
A fund heading into December can bring a specific decision to Madison Avenue: who accepts a supplier's output, who reviews it, and who can retrieve the evidence afterward. The conference offers several settings for working through that question with peers. The next conversation continues inside the firm, when those colleagues have to agree on the owner of the handoff.
The program is designed for compliance, legal, finance and operations leaders, including CCOs, CFOs, COOs and general counsel. Its agenda connects technology oversight with recordkeeping, valuation and coordination across departments.
The forum covers AI governance, vendor oversight and compliance workflows. Buyers can use those subjects to frame questions about human review, data access, retained records and responsibility across teams; the event does not guarantee a procurement or compliance outcome.
No. The published agenda describes GP-only closed-door think tanks that exclude vendors, service providers and media. Private Funds CFO Network introductions and directory access are separate membership benefits, so attendees should confirm their access before planning meetings.
The event is scheduled for December 1-2, 2026 at Convene, 360 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10017. The agenda lists registration at 08:00 on both days without expressly stating a timezone. The organizer says single-day passes and post-event session recordings are unavailable; confirm current booking and schedule details directly.
The organizer lists SEC official Maurya Crawford Keating for a keynote interview. The SEC staff's FY2026 Examination Priorities provide dated context for compliance-program implementation and technology supervision, but are not a new rule or a prediction of the December discussion.