A Path to Transparency for Alternative Investments

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investments-3-7-18.pngCapital has been flowing into the alternative investment industry over the past few years, with some experts predicting that money invested in private funds will reach as much as $20 trillion by 2020. Preqin, which collects data on the alternative investment industry, recently published a study stating that there are as many as 17,000 private funds open for investment.

Strong returns and opportunities for diversification have attracted high net worth and institutional investors, who can invest in exponentially larger quantities than the average investor. Though these investors come with a greater ability to deploy capital, their size and influence translate into greater expectations and hurdles to meet in order to invest.

The word that best sums-up these growing expectations and hurdles is “transparency,” and this word has become a lightning rod when it comes to alternative investments like hedge, private equity and venture funds, along with special purpose vehicles and real estate.

As alternative assets have become a more common avenue for investment, transparency has grown in importance for investors. A 2017 study titled “Alts Transparency: Finding the Right Balance” by the Economist Intelligence Unit highlights this growth. Sixty-three percent of respondents listed “degree of transparency” as “very important” for alternative investments, which was ahead of all other considerations. Another statistic showed that the importance of transparency as a key issue for private fund managers has increased almost six-fold since the 2008 financial crisis.

Breaking this down further, the issue of transparency can be separated into two different types: (1) information about the fund, and (2) information about investors’ holdings within that fund. The first type deals with greater transparency of the overall performance of the fund, which includes the underlying assets in which that fund is invested and how risk is assessed and managed. The second type deals with greater transparency relating to investor-level performance. This includes metrics like investors’ allocation and return, and how fees are calculated.

There are a few reasons why the industry has struggled to deliver this type of information:

Complexity of Private Funds
There are key differences in reporting metrics between the various types of private funds. Performance metrics shown to an investor in a more liquid fund, such as a hedge fund, should be different than those reported for less liquid vehicles, such as private equity funds. Adding to the complexity, investments in alternatives can come in the form of limited partnerships, co-investments and direct holdings.

Outdated Technologies That Trap Data
Many of the widely used technologies for portfolio and investor-level accounting were created several years ago and because they lack Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, they cannot integrate with each other or with other systems. This effectively traps the data contained within these systems, thereby restricting its usefulness and portability. This in turn has curtailed the ability to provide transparency to investors, as it restricts or prevents the necessary type of analysis, aggregation and modern presentation of data.

Lack of Leadership and Reporting Standardization
There is a lack of uniform reporting standards within the alternative investment industry. Although an increase in regulation along with the presence of organizations like the Institutional Limited Partners Assn. have helped advance standards in private equity, there is no current reporting standard across all types of private funds. Additionally, the party that should be responsible for delivering on transparency is unclear.

Despite these hurdles, the alternative investment industry must evolve and adapt. I would argue there are two key steps the industry must take to be able to deliver on investor demands for transparency and keep new capital flowing into private funds:

Move Towards True Digital Reporting
As it stands today, much of the industry reports performance information via static documents like PDFs, but this method traps data and inhibits interaction. By embracing new technology, the industry can move toward the type of dynamic, digital presentation of data that is experienced in brokerage and personal banking accounts. For example, cloud-based technology offerings can be integrated with accounting systems to liberate the data contained within for purposes of data mining, analysis and presentation.

Fund Administrators Must Take a Stronger Leadership Role
Fund administrators are best positioned to deliver on transparency needs given their role as independent third parties. They typically subscribe to the accounting systems that house this data and therefore have access to or create much of the analysis and reporting that is needed to deliver on transparency demands.

Helping their fund manager clients with transparency is good business for fund administrators, as it improves their overall quality of service to clients. All indications point to another banner year for alternative investments in 2018. However, investor demand for transparency will only continue to grow as alternative assets become more commonplace. The industry must modernize and adapt in order to stay ahead of the curve in the race for assets.

What Does 2017 Hold for the Alternative Investment Industry?

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Last year was an exciting one in the alternative investment industry, and all indications point to another great year in 2017. Here are five predictions that will dominate the industry in 2017.

1. Capital invested in private equity funds will continue to increase amidst a further decline in hedge funds
Growth in alternative investments will continue to be explosive in 2017. According to a report from Cerulli & Associates, the mean allocation of alternative investments is still less than 5 percent of overall assets. Depending on the industry source, the general guidance is that the ideal allocation should be in the 15 percent to 25 percent range, signaling that there is a lot more room to grow.

Nowhere has that growth been more evident than in private equity funds, which have increased dramatically over the past few years. Assets have risen from $30 billion in 1995 to around $4 trillion in 2015. This growth will continue, as 64 percent of limited partners plan to increase their allocation to private equity funds, which is up from 26 percent just five years ago.

Hedge funds, on the other hand, have struggled as poor performance compounded by high fees resulted in large outflows in 2016.

2. Regulatory and compliance pressures will continue to increase even under a Trump administration
Regulatory and compliance pressures have been a dominant factor in the alternative Investment industry (and especially among hedge funds) for several years now. While some industry leaders are optimistic that a loosening of regulations will occur under the new Trump administration, the trend toward more transparency will continue to grow.

Study after study shows the impact of mounting regulatory and compliance pressures. Here are two reports that paint a clear picture:

  • In a Longitude Research study last year more than 50 percent of fund administrators predicted that the need to keep up with regulation would have the greatest impact on their activities over the following three years.
  • A report from Linedata showed regulatory and compliance being the chief concern facing fund administrators and fund managers alike.

3. Technological capabilities will become as important for fund administrators as accounting capabilities
Fund administrators are traditionally thought of as providers of accounting services. Technology was mostly thought of as internal plumbing, and the decisions made about the use of technology were often left in the hands of an IT department, with little senior-level involvement.

It’s safe to say that those days are over. This year we will see the further emergence of technology as an integral capability for any fund administrator—on par with the importance of their accounting capabilities.

Fund administrators rely on technology to give them the data, reporting and understanding needed to satisfy the evolving needs of their clients and investors. In fact, nine out of 10 fund administrators plan to invest in technology in the next three years.

4. Consolidation will continue to increase in the fund administration business
Competition in the fund administration industry is intense. This is being driven by the explosion in capital being invested, the increasing demands for regulatory transparency, and the economies of scale needed to effectively compete in a low-margin business. No metric shows this better than the one reported by Preqin that 28 percent of fund administrators have been fired by their clients in the past 12 months.

The trend toward consolidation has escalated significantly in the past two years. While this can be good news for the largest of funds that can afford the services of the largest of fund administrators, this consolidation is likely bad news for both mid-market fund managers and mid-market fund administrators.

5. Fund administrators will become a bigger force in private equity and real estate funds, as well as with family offices
The use of fund administrators is pretty much a requirement for hedge funds, as evidenced by the outsourcing to fund administrators increasing from 50 percent in 2006 to 81 percent in 2013. This dynamic really started taking shape in the wake of the Bernie Madoff scandal, which showed the perils of a lack of validation and supervision within the industry.

In comparison, fund administrators are under-penetrated in private equity and real estate funds, with estimates showing fund administrator penetration at around 30 percent of assets under management today. However, this is expected to increase 45 percent by 2018.

The same conditions that drove the shift to fund administrators in the hedge fund space affect private equity and real estate funds as well. Just as happened with investors in hedge funds, investors in private equity and real estate funds are demanding third-party validation of assets and performance. Regulatory pressures are already having an impact on general partners of private equity and real estate funds.

Although occurring more slowly, the need to turn to fund administrators is also happening in the single and multi-family office space thanks to an increasing rate of wealth and investments in ever more complicated asset types.

How Fund Administrators Can Help Private Equity and Real Estate Funds

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Fund administrators, the independent service providers that verify the assets and valuation of investment funds, are not currently as big a presence with private equity and real estate funds as they are with hedge funds. But private equity and real estate funds should take note, because fund administrators are becoming increasingly critical to how they go to market.

Fund administrator penetration of the hedge fund market is above 80 percent, and having a fund administrator has become a requirement for hedge funds of any size.

Private equity assets have risen from $30 billion in 1995 to $4 trillion in 2015. All indications are that growth will continue to be steep, as 64 percent of limited partners (LPs) plan to increase their allocation to private equity funds, which increased from 26 percent just five years ago.

Despite this dynamic in hedge funds, fund administrators have not penetrated private equity and real estate funds in the same way. Estimates are that penetration by fund administrators of private equity and real estate fund assets under management (AUM) is only 30 percent today, and projected to increase to 45 percent by 2018.

I think this growth projection is understated, however, because many of the reasons that compelled hedge funds to begin using fund administrators also apply to private equity and real estate funds.

Here are three key reasons why hedge funds had to begin working with fund administrators and why these also apply to private equity and real estate funds:

Investor Demands for Greater Transparency
I think that this is going to be the biggest driver that will force private equity and real estate funds to use fund administrators. Investors are increasingly demanding third-party validation of AUM and Net Asset Values, as well as greater transparency in reporting.

Also, operational due diligence of a fund is occurring earlier in the request for proposal process, particularly when institutional investors are factored in. Institutional investors want to have confidence in the middle and back office capabilities of the fund, which generally means a strong accounting and reporting practice.

If these investors don’t have confidence in the management company, then they will increasingly pass on the opportunity. One recent private equity study shows that 65 percent of limited partners are increasing the level of operational due diligence that they are performing on general partners.

Increasing Regulatory and Compliance Pressures
This started to materialize in the aftermath of the Bernie Madoff scandal, with acronyms like KYC/AML, FATCA and others fast becoming part of the lexicon. Conventional wisdom holds that regulatory and compliance pressures aren’t the same for private equity and real estate funds because the level of activity is less frequent. I find this argument to be short-sighted because some of these regulations already apply to fund types beyond just hedge funds.

Technology as a Requirement
Technology is already a means of differentiation among progressive private equity and real estate fund managers. My feeling is that technology should be a requirement for all of these fund managers.

Technology can provide an effective means to address the first two points, but how to best employ technology can be tricky. When it comes to technology, there are two typical approaches. The first is often for the management company to try handling it on its own, including attempting to build out the required technology itself. The second approach (often after having been unsuccessful in the first step) is for the management company to retain an external technology vendor to handle it. Either way, the experience often ends up with the same result: Managing technology on their own takes more time, personnel, and money than the fund expects.

Private equity and real estate fund managers should instead look to fund administrators to implement and manage technology that they need. Fund administrators are better suited to adopt and manage technology given that it is required by all of their fund manager clients. This is also a more cost effective solution for fund managers, because fund administrators are better suited to spread the cost of technology across their clients.

Private equity and real estate fund managers that still think they can go it alone without the help of fund administrators are going to quickly fall behind, and lose out on opportunities.

What Keeps Alternative Investment Professionals Up at Night?

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The profile of alternative investments like hedge funds, private equity funds and real estate funds has risen dramatically in just the past five years, with a growing number of investors dipping their toes into this particular category. And this interest has pushed this once obscure class to become the fastest growing category of investments, with $18 trillion projected to flow into it by 2020.

This elevated importance has raised the stakes and pressure for key industry stakeholders, with the most obvious being the private fund managers that run the aforementioned alternative investments. However, our perspective is that the stakeholder most strongly feeling this pressure is the fund administrator that services both the private fund manager and the investor.

We find that fund administrators are under-appreciated and under-estimated for the critically important role that they play in the alternative investment industry. They are often the primary source of information and operations for the fund manager, and they are typically the conduit for the investor to be able to see and receive key information about the fund.

As these pressures continue to mount, fund administrators in particular are faced with the daunting task of keeping up with the rapidly changing landscape of the alternative investment industry, and then figuring out what they can do to succeed.

Let’s break this dynamic down into two areas:

Key Challenge
Regulatory and operational concerns have skyrocketed from being nearly non-existent just a few years ago to becoming the primary concern and challenge for both fund administrators and private fund managers. It is literally keeping these stakeholders up at night.

Multiple industry reports point to this, but here is a chart that comes from Linedata’s 2016 Global Asset Management & Administration Survey, which shows just how serious these concerns are:

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Just to reaffirm the impact of regulatory and operational concerns, notice that regulation and operations were considered more important than other seemingly critical concerns like fund performance and investor/client relations!

What can fund administrators do to succeed?

  1. Attack Regulatory and Operational Concerns: Fund administrators should look to technology to help them tackle the regulatory and operational concerns that are keeping them up at night. Begin by attacking regulatory and operational concerns. Technology can help a fund administrator better adapt and more quickly comply with new regulatory and compliance requirements. Progressive software solutions can help a fund administrator “project-ize” regulatory compliance by providing intuitive and transparent workflows that help them better collaborate with clients and investors, assigning a particular task to a particular person, and tracking the completion of each step in a way that is visible to all participants. Email notifications at appropriate moments along the way prompt the assigned person to know that an action needs to be taken. This type of digital collaboration greatly reduces operational efficiencies, including the back-and-forth communication that currently happens via email, electronic file folder systems and phone calls.
  2. Differentiate Themselves Through Client Service: Technology can also help a fund administrator dramatically improve its service to both its fund manager clients, as well as to the investors of its clients. Intuitive portals for both clients and investors that provide useful performance dashboards, as well as easy-to-use digital document storage and sharing, go a long way towards improving the fund administrator’s quality of service.

What’s keeping fund administrators up at night? It’s the fear of the unknown with the ever-increasing regulatory and operational pressures, as well as the fear of losing their clients and investors as a result of poor service.

Using modern technology can be the answer to a good night’s sleep for fund administrators. There’s a quote from the Linedata report that put it best: “Now is the time to embrace digitization to gain competitive advantage in this dynamic market.”