Technology – you always hear something new about it every day, whether that’s in the daily news or in your time scrolling through social media. With its rapid pace of development, it’s bound to disrupt a variety of industries. We’ve seen the development of computers many years ago and still see its effects up to this day. All sorts of innovations have sprung from the field of technology, some of the latest ones being artificial intelligence and blockchain.
The disrupting waves of technology have reached the finance sector, and it’s evidently done so. Processing real-time payments have never been easier, and checking out the current balance of your bank account can almost be done instantly. However, there’s one field in finance where technology has made a huge impact: investments.
What Is a Private Equity Fund?
A private equity fund is an investment scheme that allows you to invest in a fund that’s managed by a private equity firm. In this kind of setup, you’re technically investing in private companies that aren’t listed on major stock exchanges, such as the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Hence, a lot of these companies are still in their nascent stages of growth.
These funds often think long-term – sometimes these investments are held for at least ten years. As a result, they have an active role in steering the direction of these private companies to ensure that they realize their full potential. Additionally, these funds provide guidance and other resources to catalyze growth. Once a company’s value has increased significantly, the fund eventually sells its stake at a profit.
An important detail to note about private equity funds is that they take on two forms: venture capital and buyouts. The former focuses on rapidly growing companies, companies that show promise. Meanwhile, the latter focuses on mature companies that might need some restructuring to guide them toward the path of growth.
All of these tasks are not possible without the help of private equity professionals such as fund administrators. Externally sourced, private equity fund administrators support a fund’s administrative functions and ensure their compliance with the regulatory requirements.
What Is the Role of Fund Administrators?
The vast scope of responsibilities allows fund administrators to become a critical component of private equity funds. Here are the major responsibilities of fund administrators:
Fund Formation
In the formation of private equity funds, administrators play a huge role as they are highly involved in providing legal and regulatory support. One way to accomplish this is through crafting the relevant documents that meet regulatory standards.
Financial Reporting
Private equity fund administrators are highly involved in creating financial reports, performing the fund’s accounting functions. Besides creating financial statements, they’re involved in bookkeeping and maintaining other financial records. Additionally, they provide detailed reports on investment performance, informing investors with the latest information on their assets.
Fund Valuation
Determining the value of fund investments is no easy task, but fund administrators are up to the task when it comes to doing so. By using various, complex financial instruments, administrators determine the value of holdings by following the relevant guidelines for determining valuation.
How Is Technology Changing Their Responsibilities?
Without a doubt, fund administrators are critical to the operations of private equity funds. However, performing these tasks following the traditional method will yield inefficiencies. That’s where technology comes into the picture. A major disruptor, technology has changed the way fund administrators work forever.
Automation
If there’s anything technology is good at, it’s definitely simplifying our tasks – that’s why it can automate multiple administrative tasks that fund administrators perform. This, therefore, increases their efficiency at work, allowing them to focus on other important activities. Moreover, automating basic tasks such as manual data entry reduces the number of errors, which also increases operational efficiency. Not to mention, a lot of automation platforms allow fund administrators to run timely and accurate capital calls.
And with the advent of artificial intelligence, it’s likely that it’ll eventually play a significant part in sharing some responsibilities. Some of the automated tasks included approval workflows and capital calls.
Data Analytics
Data, data, data – it’s one thing that everyone’s been talking about, and rightfully so. The power lies in those who are skilled in weaving the power of data. In the field of finance, data analytics is especially crucial to fund administrators. With advanced data analysis in private equity platforms, administrators are able to observe trends that can be particularly useful in determining future investments. Alternatively, they can use the power of data to analyze investment performance. With the help of data, administrators can make recommendations and decisions based on concrete data.
Data Management
Another point goes to data as another crucial element of an administrator’s role is data management. When you’re dealing with large volumes of data, it can be difficult to analyze – so much so that it can lead to data quality issues, or other problems when scaling up data storage.
With the help of data management tools, fund administrators can handle large amounts of data such as investor information and financial transactions. From these data sets, administrators generate reports to present to investors and regulatory bodies.
Cybersecurity
We all know how cyberattacks are extremely prevalent in everything online – and more so in the field of finance. With so much at stake, it’s important that private equity funds stay secure from the looming cyber threats by devious cybercriminals. However, do note that it’s not the fund administrators who create cybersecurity programs. Rather, these fund administrators must abide by good cybersecurity practices to fulfill their responsibilities safely. When you’re dealing with an investor’s personal information or trading activity, these must be kept confidential, and the only way to do so is to practice good cybersecurity.
In Conclusion
With the rapid evolution of technology, it’s bound to break new ground across a variety of industries – one being the finance sector. More specifically, private equity funds will benefit from the incorporation of technology into their operations, with fund administrators successfully leveraging its power. While their responsibilities of fund formation, onboarding, and traditional accounting remain the same, the merging of technology into their tasks allows for increased operational efficiency.
Technology helps them automate administrative tasks, analyze and manage data, and engage in good cybersecurity practices to help them provide their services to the best of their abilities. A blessing? Arguably yes. But most definitely, we’ll be seeing more technological innovations that will change their work forever.
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