After Earnings · Nov 4, 2026 · 42m · 36m saved
With Ryan Hicke, CEO of SEI Investments (NASDAQ: SEIC)
SEI serves 9 of the 20 largest US banks and 48 of the world's 100 largest asset managers, and no single client accounts for more than about 2.5% of its revenue. Ryan Hicke, CEO of SEI Investments, told Austin Hankwitz on After Earnings that the reason retail investors don't recognize the SEI brand is by design.
"We're really the railroad tracks that underpin a whole variety of really world-class names that are the trains... we kind of don't have to worry about betting on the train. We're focused on kind of laying the tracks." — Ryan Hicke
Ryan runs a company that administers investment vehicles, manages assets inside them, and serves as the system of record for banks and asset managers most retail investors have never heard of.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 42 minutes of audio, 6 minutes of reading.
Here are the 6 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
SEI is the "railroad tracks," not the "trains," Ryan says, serving 9 of the 20 largest US banks
No single client is above 2.5% of revenue
Q3 revenue grew 14% to $662 million, and year-to-date sales already beat SEI's best full year ever
SEI's 2022-2023 strategic narrowing to alternative managers and community banks drove the acceleration
M&A is forcing clients to consolidate from as many as 20 vendors down to a short list
An internal "disruption team" of eight people tried to prove AI could replace SEI's biggest business — and couldn't scale it
Private credit and equity reaching retirement accounts is "not an if, it's a when," Ryan says
1. The Railroad Tracks Model
Ryan broke SEI's business into pieces: administering investment vehicles like mutual funds, ETFs and private credit funds; managing the assets inside them through SEI's own investment unit and curated outside managers; and running the system of record and custody technology underneath it all. In 2025 SEI added a fourth leg, advice, through an acquisition and partnership with a US financial-advisor firm.
SEI doesn't bet on which bank or manager wins, Ryan says — it builds the infrastructure underneath all of them
"We're really the railroad tracks that underpin a whole variety of really world-class names that are the trains... we kind of don't have to worry about betting on the train. We're focused on kind of laying the tracks." — Ryan Hicke
That structure is also why SEI carries almost no client concentration risk.
SEI's largest client is only about 2.5% of its revenue, Ryan says
"Our largest client only represents about 2 and a half percent of our revenue. So we don't have a significant amount of single client concentration risk." — Ryan Hicke
