Like many of you, we recently learned of Assure shutting its doors, leaving many fund and SPV managers scrambling to find a solution. This is difficult timing right before the turn of the year, and we want to offer help to those left without support.
Over the years, we have seen many productized SPV solutions. It’s obvious why these platforms are showing up more and more. Many of the workflows associated with starting a fund or syndicate could, and should, be automated. But, we have found that the solutions that have been designed to replace the accountants behind the scenes are inherently flawed, and the model can break down with any complexity in the administration of the fund or SPV. Some of these “SPV-in-a-box” or “fund-in-a-box” solutions were designed by folks without industry experience. Various complexities can arise with the administration of an SPV or fund that inevitably require someone with subject matter expertise to weigh in or act. For example, you may have different classes of partners, a preferred return hurdle, a ratchet in the carry, a reduction in management fee for a particular partner, cashless mechanisms, distributions-in-kind… the list is endless. Moving your SPVs and funds to another productized model may or may not be the right solution.
What makes Vector different is our team and our commitment to workflow engineering. We are committed to managing our growth and that means hiring diligently and carefully. We do our best to hire seasoned veterans. We generate margin by engineering our workflows. We have created the most exciting tech stack in the industry, called Valence, which is designed to augment our accountants, not replace them. By leveraging the skills and experience of our amazing team, we designed Valence to handle the most complex fund situations. Our model is service-first. Each of our clients is partnered with a dedicated team of senior fund accountants and controllers that serve as an extension of our clients’ team. In the spirit of managing our growth, we are not an “umbrella solution,” but we do have a strong partner network and help our clients select service providers that are a good fit economically and culturally. We are steadfast in our focus on white glove fund administration, accounting, and reporting. See our full Scope of Services here.
Because we built Valence for alternative investment vehicles, the benefits get greater as more and more entities are on the platform. We have a great solution for those with many SPVs and/or funds as it allows for cross-entity portfolio management and reporting. Having everything under one roof can be quite powerful.
Of course, economics matter. We may not be the right solution for an SPV with less than $500k. But if you are managing $500k or more, have external LPs, are raising or managing a fund, or are managing a large number of SPVs, we strongly urge you to consider a different approach.
Here are some questions to ask a potential fund administration partner:
- Can your system handle complexity out the gate? (see above for list of common occurrences)
- What team will we be working with? What is their industry experience & background?
- What records are needed to determine milestones for migration?
We urge caution when evaluating providers that have fully automated migrations. Unfortunately, migrations are not easy so it’s imperative you work with a team who understands them to preserve the integrity of your data. We have often found during migrations, that certain records may be missing or incorrect (including insufficient support for commitments, missing or inaccurate contribution dates, mislabeling within the general ledger and combining of entries, among other issues). These issues can create big problems for fully-automated solutions. No two migrations are ever the same, so we recommend prioritizing strategy and framework over a concrete plan (which can often grossly overpromise milestones and deadlines).
We are standing by and happy to support affected Assure customers. Even if we aren’t the right solution, we are happy to make referrals and assist in any way we can. To Assure employees, please reach out and we are happy to share opportunities at Vector and other partners in our network who may be hiring.
– Matt Wheeler (CEO) & Molly Yakubian (COO)
