A growing number of firms choose a fund administration partner, like Standish
On Wednesday, the team at the Altvia Broomfield office was lucky to have a learning lunch with Director, Katie Hall, and Venture Capitalist Consultant, Becky Cooper, of Standish Management. Standish offers fund administration services for Managers and General Partners of private equity funds, an increasingly popular service. More specifically, Standish works with firms that have a focus on Buyout, Venture Capital, Real Estate and Fund-of-Funds.
Founded in 2007, Hall and Cooper shared with the team how their services have become in-demand by clients throughout private equity. And it’s true, just take a look at their growing success, in 2010 Standish managed 100 funds, today, they manage over 1000.
Both Hall and Cooper shared their process, and the services they offer to their clients. “Limited partners are seeking a non-biased administration service to provide thorough and accurate reporting” Hall explained, “this actually creates a positive and healthy relationship between LPs and their GPs”.
With monetary investments climbing at record highs, the importance of clean and accurate reporting has never been more critical. In general, first or second fund managers starting a new firm tap on companies such as Standish because they have not yet reached the point of growth to add a sole individual or team dedicated to fund administration.
Instead, small firms rely on Standish to minimize their overhead but still deliver to their LPs. Surprisingly, Hall mentions they are seeing a shift across all different sized firms, “our clients are, and typically have been, small to mid-sized firms, however, we are seeing an increase of larger firms join our client list as well”. Firms, regardless of size, see the benefit of having a fund administrator as a mutual party for their investors, which inherently strengthens trust, as well as also benefiting from reduced overhead of an internal back office team
Standish doesn’t just offer financial reporting for GPs and LPs, they also offer performance return calculations, investor communications, capital calls and distributions, enhanced analytics, and consulting services. Today, Standish has 12 U.S. locations in almost all hotbed cities for private equity including New York, Denver, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, and more. With the number of firms opening up and growing daily in the industry, the accessibility of locations makes it easier for their client’s day-to-day activities. A big thank-you goes out to both Katie Hall, and Becky Cooper, for taking the time to come in and educate the team further about another side of private equity and fund administration services.
