These days investment managers must not only hire a fund administrator to increase investor confidence, but also to ensure the fund administrator is fulfilling their duties. Therefore, investment managers must conduct some level of shadow accounting to ensure positions and cash reconcile to their fund administrators. This activity is highly unproductive, and not directly related to the business of investment managers. OpEff provides shadow reconciliation services so that investment managers can be confident their fund administrator doesn't miss a thing.
Each of these steps carries a risk of miscalculation. For example, a slight mismatch in the crystallized incentive can throw off a partner's capital balance. This would result in the fund’s monthly income being allocated incorrectly among all partners in the following period, this of course is a more nuanced error. Most common errors result from miscommunications between the hedge fund, its investors, and the fund administrator. This can cause issues such as a wrong incentive fee being applied to the investor, an investor being placed in a wrong share class, or the classic error, the fund admin failing to record a redemption. With that said, it becomes extremely critical to reconcile investor allocations, even if a fund administrator is handling it.
In addition to mitigating risks of miscalculation, this reconciliation can include powerful data about its investors. Data such as the demographics of various investors, the liquidity schedule attached to various share classes, investment behaviors across various clients, and liquidity forecasting for the fund in general. Additionally, IR teams and PMs can have investor history at their fingertips inhouse. This way, they can discuss accounts with their clients without having to wait on the fund administrator to provide capital activity reports. Having a systematic reconciliation rather than spreadsheets also gives confidence to investors, and attests to the fund's commitment towards a rock solid state of the art back office infrastructure. Investors are increasingly demanding such checks to the fund admin as a part of their ODD and as a robust control measure. A further relatively uncommon benefit of having these records inhouse is that the fund can perform a tentative assessment of its tax liability throughout the year, instead of waiting till next tax season to know the expense.
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