Ark launches fund ops platform

Fintech company Ark has launched a new fund operations platform for private fund managers and administrators to streamline investor and accounting reporting, at a time when investors are asking for more frequent data reporting.

The new platform offers branded client portals, capital call and distribution automation, investor allocations with capital account statement automation, portfolio management, general ledger integration and multi-manager platform administration.

GPs and fund admins are increasingly turning to portals to tackle the challenges of greater transparency demands. Building off Ark’s existing LP platform, the fund ops platform allows fund administrators and GPs to streamline and launch processes digitally. According to chief operating officer Bill Ward, private fund managers can use the ops platform to streamline investor reporting, investor allocations and capital calls, as well as distributions and portfolio accounting from a portal to a general ledger.

Ward explained that the fund ops platform will interface with other investor reporting and general ledger solutions to make operations seamless. The platform is fully customizable.

While the platform was designed with the aim of making fund accounting and administration more efficient, private fund managers use the service, too, to make their back-office operations more efficient.

“The problem for… generic tools is that they still require users to use spreadsheets, which requires manual reconciliation, and this then increases the risk of errors,” Ward said.

Ark’s new platform provides partnership accounting capabilities that can plug right into existing off-the-shelf general ledger solutions, saving time and reducing errors.

Ark’s existing fund admin and accounting services clients like that they can quickly and efficiently get the platform up and running for their own clients, and because it’s cloud-based different platforms can be integrated easily.

“With Ark as an integral part of our technology stack, we can go live for clients same-day without any need for custom development,” said Michael Trinkaus, chief executive of 4Pines Fund Services.

This efficiency and integrations allows 4Pines to focus on client service, Trinkaus added.

Ark’s clients include fund administrators, private equity, venture capital, real estate, private credit and fund of funds teams. Today the platform supports over $100 billion in capital commitments, 70,000 end users and 425 fund managers.