The Art of Onboarding for Private Equity Fund Administration

When looking for a partner to handle your private equity or real estate administration, it is important to understand their processes and experience, beginning with their onboarding philosophy. The onboarding process is the first and most important step of outsourcing fund administration for private equity funds.

The key to achieving onboarding success is having a dedicated onboarding team. Within the administration service provider, this team’s sole focus is setting up every client so that they can service their needs efficiently for the life of the relationship.

As a new fund is onboarded, the data itself can present many challenges. Oftentimes funds will store data in many different formats, including spreadsheets, databases, and/or commercial general ledger (G/L) systems. Some funds even keep records in hardcopy format. As a result, bringing both financial and non-financial data from disparate sources into a new system can be a Herculean task.

The obvious solution is to look for ways to remove the manual effort in order to develop best practices and create efficiencies.

Administrators that employ a dedicated engagement management and onboarding team are able to be flexible in accommodating varying fund needs. Some funds use all products, only certain products, or create their own services, and the flexible administrator is able to identify ways to efficiently meet all of those situationally unique needs.

Implementing a technical solution from an established provider enables funds to enjoy increased accuracy, lower costs, and shortened time-to-market. The most experienced fund administration providers can now successfully transfer data from the majority of their clients’ funds to their platforms in just a few weeks.