Professional Bio: Karin Oberholzer - Manager, Funds
Background
Karin is a Senior Manager in Grant Thornton’s Funds team in the Cayman Islands. She has over 20 years' experience in the audit industry. Karin qualified as a Chartered Accountant in South Africa at a Big-4 firm and continued her career in the financial services sector in the Netherlands and Ireland. She has also worked as an operational group internal auditor at an investment manager.
Experience
Karin joined Grant Thornton as a Senior Manager in 2022. Prior to this, she has 16 years' experience working at Big-4 firms as an external auditor, mainly concentrating in the alternative investment fund industry on vehicles incorporated in the Cayman Islands, Guernsey, the Netherlands and Ireland, and managed by multi-national Investment managers located mainly in Switzerland, USA, Canada, Brazil and the UK.
She also has experience in reinsurance and pension funds. During her time as an internal audit manager at an investment manager, she worked on operational audits on various departments from operations, portfolio management to financial risk management at group entities situated in Rotterdam, Luxembourg, Switzerland and India. She also performed compliance audits such as on Transfer Pricing, UCITS and MiFID II compliance.
Industry experience
Karin has experience in Venture Capital, Private Equity, Hedge funds and Commodity Pools as well as different fund structures. She has knowledge of various financial instruments, including (reverse) repurchase agreements, fund of fund investments, asset backed securities, derivatives (options, futures, forwards, swaps). Karin also has knowledge of reinsurance contracts and other catastrophe insurance linked securities, such as cat bonds and quota shares. She has also provided firm-wide training on various IFRS standards.
Professional qualifications and memberships
- Chartered Accountant (CPA), South Africa
- Masters and Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting) (cum laude), University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa
- Bachelor of Technology and National Diploma in Internal Auditing (cum laude), Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa
