Fund admins respond to industry calls for transparency

Recent partnerships between fund administrators and tech providers indicate the industry is prioritizing investor calls for transparency from their GPs, and that GPs are looking to their fund administrators to help provide it.

Among those partnerships: 4Pines Fund Services recently agreed to partner with technology provider Allvue Systems to help provide real-time fund accounting in response to updated demands for GP transparency.

“Private equity firms today face increased demand from clients and regulators for heavy reporting and transparency in real-time and at a faster pace than ever before,” said Michael Trinkaus, chief executive of 4Pines.

The integrated Allvue fund accounting system provides financial statement reporting, a multi-currency general ledger, cash management and waterfall capabilities as well as the ability to standardize workflows into a cloud-based system.

Socium Fund Services also announced this week that it partnered with Eleven, a cloud-based tech provider, to facilitate free information and transaction sharing between GPs, LPs and fund admins, in what they hope will “disrupt” the traditional fund admin model.

“Eleven’s electronic investment workflows are going to scale private investing and disrupt traditional fund administration practices,” said Michael Von Bevern, chief executive of Socium.

The technology that was born out of Socium and Eleven’s partnership moves the fund subscription process to a three-way digital workflow between the investor, fund administrator and fund manager, using the fund’s existing subscription documents.

The platform helps to strengthen the GP-LP relationship by allowing them to distribute and receive information such as NAVs, performance analytics, and communications digitally, and by giving investors the ability to transact and make fund subscriptions online, as well as to receive real-time subscription activity updates.

Socium and Eleven hope to ensure the platform will be adopted by fund administrators of all sizes and will be rolling out the technology to its clients this year.