At its root, the purpose of third-party fund administration in the private equity space is to lift burdensome administrative responsibility from your core team — to handle the middle- and back-office requirements of fund management efficiently, and at scale, so you can focus your internal efforts on raising and investing capital. Given that efficiency is a key value-add of third-party fund administration in general, why do many fund administrators lack efficiency in how they run their own client services teams?
Most fund administrators divide their workforce into multiple teams: typically there will be a Fund Accounting team, a separate Investor Services team, and yet another team to handle Financial Reporting. When your fund has a question or issue to resolve with any of those departments, the query needs to be directed to the correct contact on the correct team if you hope to get resolution. In our opinion, this is far from ideal.
Some fund administrators appoint a client relationship manager, a point of contact through which all queries can be made. However, this just adds another layer — the relationship manager doesn’t have the domain expertise to answer questions directly, so he or she must run back to the appropriate department to answer the question or solve the problem. This reminds us of the game of “Telephone,” where the same question is relayed multiple times to different parties involved. By the time question/answer has come full circle it has changed, and all of that time has been wasted.
At JTC, we do things a little bit differently. We take a “one team” approach, unencumbered by artificial divisions. The way we see it, we’re here to make your life and work easier, and additional departmental complexity on our end would only hinder that.
This means that as an JTC fund administration customer, you have one team which works on your account: client services ambassadors who get to know your fund’s needs and processes intimately, and who — crucially — actually possesses the relevant expertise to answer questions and solve problems when they arise.
This means that no matter your question — whether it pertains to investor onboarding or capital statements — you can reach out through the same channel and expect the same informed and professional service.
We find that this arrangement with a client services team makes things easier, faster and more streamlined — exactly what modern fund administration is all about.
JTC welcomes your questions and opinions. Contact Us today!
