Micah Lewis

What is your personal mission in life?

I like to be challenged, always.

Building and creating new solutions is what energizes me. It’s the reason I look forward to going to work every day. Fund accounting has let me live that mission: it sits at the elegant intersection of problem solving and technology, and this intersection is exactly what draws me in.

What drew you to fund accounting, and what has kept you in it?

I’m genuinely interested in markets and investment management, how and why the economy operates the way it does. With a math degree, the overlap felt natural.

Private markets, in particular, fascinate me intellectually. I chose fund administration over an in-house role because the services aspect exposes me to a much wider range of concepts and problems. Working inside one fund means managing one structure with a singular set of challenges. Here, on a daily basis, I am exposed to a variety of clients and their needs.

AI is transforming every industry, including fund administration. Where do you think the industry is going?

There’s no question AI is going to transform fund administration and accounting at large. This part is obvious and inevitable. What surprised me is the speed of change. At Formulary, we’ve reimagined how the industry works in a matter of months, and we are just getting started.

Now that I’m in it, building the solutions myself, I can appreciate how AI augments truly exceptional accountants. It lets them work at an unprecedented velocity, depth and scale that a traditional fund administrator simply cannot match.

Our platform lets me be in five places at once without sacrificing the quality of client experience. Once you’ve experienced Formulary capabilities as an accountant, there’s no going back to the old way.

Why did you join Formulary Financial? What was the aha moment?

I was looking for a company with a bold vision and a compelling strategy for reinventing the industry with AI.

My technical interview was with the entire founding team, and I knew immediately I was home. These were my people. From the moment I met Bryan and Rick, I could tell we shared the same values, not just around accounting but around life. You can tell when someone thinks the way you do. I knew we’d get along. On top of that, I was genuinely inspired by the mission itself, and the rare chance to co-create capabilities for accountants, GPs, and LPs from the ground up.

I left that interview knowing that if I passed the assessment, I was absolutely taking the job.

Formulary talks a lot about “bionic accounting,” blending human expertise with modern technology. What does that actually look like in your day-to-day work with clients?

I’m in it every moment of every day. Today, for example, I worked with engineers across different parts of the system, e.g. client-facing reporting, smart audit capabilities, and consolidation logic.

At Formulary, we spend our time building the optimal system, the one that does everything accountants actually need it to do, instead of inventing clever workarounds for a system crippled by limitations. We’re building the future, not patching around the present. Instead of being stuck with the only path available, I get to design the best possible one. That’s invigorating.

What are you aspiring to in your role at Formulary as Director of Accounting?

Absolute client satisfaction, where we’re seen as reliable, trusted partners, and not just another service provider.

We recently led onboarding for a multi-billion-dollar investment firm, and the client team rated us 9.5 out of 10 for the first close and the migration process. That’s how I know we’re doing a great job.

On a personal level, it’s about self-improvement every day, and learning new skills. I hold myself to a high bar and pay close attention to how my clients and my team experience working with me. Given how we operate, I continuously learn something new: from engineers, clients, and the broader ecosystem of partners building alongside us.

What does your day-to-day look like at Formulary? How is it different from a traditional administrator?

Like other administrators, we work closely with our clients. This part isn’t different.

What is very different is the quality of our relationships, and the high bar for client service. We anchor our touchpoints on understanding the goals of our clients, co-developing solutions to support them in their operations, and engaging as thought partners on key challenges.

From the client perspective, what is also different is quality, access and speed of data. I do not have to be a gatekeeper of information. Clients have full access to the source of truth. This means that collaboration is about answering questions and solving problems, not data delivery.

The aspect that’s also quite different is actively building with clients. On a daily basis, together with our engineers, we interface with clients on solutions that make their lives easier.

How would you describe Formulary’s culture versus traditional administrators?

The differences are stark. I came from large administrators, where the culture is risk-averse. If something’s wrong, the default is a “same as last year” mentality. At Formulary, it’s the opposite. We challenge last year’s approach and the status quo with a first-principles, iterate-daily mindset. For us, it’s about getting it right, not staying under the radar.

At other places, you’re not encouraged to give feedback on products or systems because that’s someone else’s department. Here, everyone has input on everything. That culture of feedback is a world apart from traditional administrators.

There’s also real openness. Other places are siloed: direction, roadmap, what gets built and how, where none of it is yours to weigh in on. On our team we have direct input into the whole business. If you want to be involved, that’s game-changing for both engagement and job satisfaction. You get to create real change in the organization.

The Formulary mission is to be the most reliable operations partner to investment firms. How does this come to life in your day-to-day here?

It shows up everywhere. Compared to other firms, we’re involved in a wide range of client business operations. We touch the management company, general partner vehicles, and every fund vehicle. We offer an intelligence layer across the entire business, paired with the ability to deliver extremely accurate, traceable data. This unique approach is felt across every part of fund operations.

Most administrators just deliver the books, which makes them a commodity. We deliver high-quality, meaningful, and fast financial information and insights.

As a result, clients don’t need to keep a management company record or maintain parallel shadow books. They’re freed up to focus on their actual business: investing and generating returns.

A lot of administrators don’t see it that way. They just deliver books. We see ourselves as strategic partners delivering real value.

Who is an ideal fit at Formulary on the accounting team? Is there a particular type of accountant that Formulary is best suited for?

Excellent accountants who care deeply about their craft. Without that, you’d struggle here.

Domain experts who want to build things, are naturally curious, and get energized by leveraging technology to solve complex problems for clients.

If someone is considering joining Formulary, what would you want them to know?

Once you see the system, and the way we operate as a team, you’ll never want to go back to the old way of doing things.

We’ve built a platform and a way of operating that enable accountants to unleash their full potential.

What excites you most about the future of Formulary and the industry at large?

Spending far less time on things that have always been a waste of time, and unlocking capacity and mindshare for strategic problem solving and serving clients exceptionally well.