Blogs

Today’s advanced technology has transformed industries worldwide, creating new efficiencies and opportunities.  Not surprisingly, many participants in the private capital industry have been reaping the benefits as well.  However, if your firm has not yet jumped on this trend, now is the time to ensure you stay competitive.    In this article, we'll look at how the industry is engaging with these technologies and how your firm can benefit. Tackling Data Management Challenges Asset managers, especially those specializing in alternatives, have…...

How to Prepare for Rising ESG Fund Compliance Requirements Once considered a trend, ESG, or Environmental, Social and Governance, has evolved into one of the strongest themes in today's financial world. Recently, we’ve watched lawmakers move proposals from suggestions to new laws.  Now, implementation woes are being felt widely as funds seek to comply with new legislation that is a challenge to interpret. [i] Most fund managers will find themselves wrestling with new requirements soon if they are not dealing…...

The pandemic provided a significant boost to the private equity industry.  Fueled by a COVID-induced technology boom, 2021 was a record-breaking year with $1.2 trillion in deals. [i] Then, 2022 turned out to be the second biggest year in history, with almost $730 billion in private equity transactions.[ii]  As we get started in 2023, where is the industry likely headed? Will Private Equity Continue with Its Strong Momentum? With two back-to-back record years, 2023 is eagerly anticipated.  What will it…...

According to Blackrock, the private equity industry tripled in the past decade and continues to grow at a lightning pace. This explosive growth has been fuelled partly by an increase in institutional investment.  As these dominant investors have rushed in, they have brought significant influence to them.  Frustrated by the traditional opacity of the market, these investors have pushed for more private equity transparency in fees.  By funnelling their voices through the influential Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA), there's no…...

If you’re a private equity or venture capital fund manager, few decisions are as critical as how you manage your back office.  Between potential liability, overhead and impact on your time, these operations inevitably influence your bottom line.  That's why fund managers are increasingly choosing to outsource these functions.  But fund administrators vary in their capabilities and the type of clients they serve. Here are five critical questions to ask to find the best fund administrator for your alternative assets…...

In today’s society, we are increasingly seeing investors move diversity, inclusion and more broadly ESG (environmental, social and governance) to the top of their requirements of their asset managers. Not only do today’s managers have to demonstrate track record and attract investment in a fiercely competitive environment, they have to do so whilst demonstrating commitment to the “right” kinds of investment. To put it bluntly, the market for managers who do not have any specific commitments to these modern principles…...

As the world continues to battle an international health crisis, this month we wanted to take a look at the topic of process resilience and what this means for alternative asset investors, managers and service providers. What is process resilience? Process resilience as a concept arose from software development, and it is a measure of the ability of any process to tolerate faults. Processes can be made fault tolerant by arranging a group of processes, with each member of that…...

Fund administration and servicing is a hot button topic in alternative investments. The conversation has moved on from whether to outsource, to one where service levels and takeover activity are being increasingly scrutinised. Each week, participants see headlines of titanic mergers and acquisitions being financed from the huge pool of commitments that have flooded into buyout funds in the last decade. With high costs of change for customers and high barriers to entry maintained by governments, regulatory bodies, and entrenched…...

In the finance world, it is a rare day when we don’t hear about automation and technology transforming how operations are conducted. From AI to robots to machine learning and virtual banks – sometimes the future can seem daunting. In wealth management for example, we now have retail access to products which are completely automated – think of Nutmeg and Moneyfarm as two pioneers in the UK. In alternative assets and specifically in PE and VC, we face a specific…...

People are at the heart of any organisation, and it is important to recognise that people are not machines that are content to spend their time mimicking them. People have ambitions, cognition, flexibility, ethics and emotional intelligence that cannot be replicated by machines. In alternative assets though, we subject many people both on the client side (GP/LP) and the provider side (vendors and service providers) to a barrage of manual tasks despite a plethora of software solutions, and increasingly qualified…...