Platform and Industry updates

Despite the enormous amounts of money that they control, most hedge fund firms are ‘small’ companies: small in the sense of the number of people they employ. 

And those that they do employ are busy. Not only is that because all small firms, regardless of industry, tend to exhibit more freneticism on a day-to-day basis than their larger counterparts; it’s because everyone, not just the investment professionals, are watching the markets alongside doing their actual job. 

Certainly, they are usually too busy to proactively source new technology suppliers. Most hedge fund firms change their tech when something goes wrong with their existing one or prices rise to what they consider to be an unacceptable level. But they will tolerate price rises to a degree, and the odd glitch or display of poor customer support now and then, because changing providers requires not only sourcing a new one but onboarding it and learning a new system. There are no cost problems in business, only revenue ones, as the saying goes. Ergo, displacing tech competitors is difficult in hedge fund world.

That is why it’s important to get in at the beginning.

According to Form D data collected by 9AT, 299 hedge fund filings were submitted to the SEC in the first four months of this year. Of course, not all of those are emerging or start-up managers, so those existing firms launching new funds will have a tech infrastructure in place already. But plenty enough will be, and the data referenced here is only for the period January – April this year, which means eight more months of filings – and therefore, new hedge funds - coming to market in the remainder of 2024 for sales reps at tech firms to get excited about.

Of course, most of these new firms and funds will have used certain providers at a previous job and will already have their favorites. But it is also true that many of these firms will want to establish their own identity, taking a greenfield implementation approach to how they build their technology infrastructure. And they are often cost-conscious as well, meaning that firms with a more competitive price point have a better chance of success with the newer and emerging manager cohort.

And for firms that have technology that can be applied to many other silos in the alternative investment industry, there is an even larger audience to target. According to Form D data collected by 9AT, there were 998 Form D private equity filings in the first four months of this year, and 1,714 Form D venture capital filings, many more than in the hedge fund space.

There are, of course, many more hurdles for technology companies to negotiate on the route to new customer acquisition success. Tailoring the pitch to the fund’s strategy being one; back in the hedge fund space, it is well documented that equity hedge strategies comprise the preponderance of new launches overall, but not all of them will want the latest and greatest in public-equity related tech. And compliance being another – the SEC’s pending cybersecurity regulations for fund managers means that these firms will be more focused on whether new tech firms can reach a higher compliance bar.

Those hurdles are high – it’s not easy selling tech to a hedge fund. But those technology service providers that do get into new hedge fund firms at the ground level could, in time, enjoy the same competitive advantage that incumbent providers enjoy at the more established firms. 
 

Editor's Picks:

• Hedge Funds Step Up Purchases of Tech Stocks, Goldman Sachs Says
• Private Debt Secondary Market to See Higher Deal Flow
• Private Equity Largely Absent From US IPO Market’s Recovery
• US Spending on London Real Estate Rebounds to Highest in Eight Years
• 5 Trends Steering Venture Capital In 2024

The first quarter of the year is a busy one for Registered Investment Advisers: those with a financial year end of December 31st are required to file an updated Form ADV within 90 days, so for those watching the private fund industry, there is plenty of information that can be gleaned from looking at this data.

Plenty of firms look at the data to see which firms and their affiliated private funds have changed service providers. Of course, private funds and their advisers changing service providers is nothing new. A range of factors drive the decision; costs, quality of the offering and the customer service function, to name a few.

But one service provider change raises more eyebrows than any other: Auditors.

Reasons that a private fund might change auditors include those listed above. But a change of auditor may suggest potential accounting issues or a breakdown in trust between the fund and the previous auditor. Neither of those reasons receive a green check mark on a due diligence questionnaire and almost always call for a deeper dive by the investor (and can even be a cause for redemptions for those that are at the ‘very averse’ end of the risk spectrum).

So, it perhaps comes as a surprise that, according to data collected by 9AT by aggregating Form ADV filings in the US, 2,346 private funds changed audit firm in the year to March 31st, 2024.

That seems like a high number on the surface. But looking at that in percentage terms, there were 75,468 funds outstanding at the start of the period, so at a macro level, only 3.1% changed auditors.

The SEC splits funds into sub-categories and the manager selects what they think is the most appropriate label for their fund when they file. Figure 1 below shows the breakdown of the number and percentage of funds that changed auditor in the period April 1, 2023 – March 31, 2024, based on the SEC filing category.

Figure 1: Private Funds that changed auditor, April 1, 2023 – March 31, 2024
 

Source: 9AT

Whether the percentage figures above are high, low, or in the middle is a question for the individual, given its subjectivity. 

It is perhaps little surprise which audit firms comprise the top five of the ‘competitor displacement’ table. Figure 2 below shows the top five firms, sorted by most to least, that have replaced a previous auditor. So, Deloitte has replaced the previous auditor most often overall; RSM has replaced the auditor most often in the private equity category, PwC in the real estate category, and so on.

Figure 2: Private Funds that changed auditor, April 1, 2023 – March 31, 2024, Ranked by Auditor and Category

Source: 9AT

Note: The Liquidity Funds category only had two auditor changes in its entirety the time period analyzed so was excluded from the table and analysis
* The Securitized Asset category saw only five audit firms complete a competitor displacement in the time period analyzed

Interestingly, we see non-Big Four audit firms take up a significant number of spots (14) in the top five across the six fund categories. Indeed, in the Private Equity category, which saw the most auditor changes both from an absolute and relative perspective, the top two, RSM and Grant Thornton, are non-Big Four. In the Venture Capital category, which saw the second most changes from an absolute perspective and relative perspective, two non-Big Four names (Frank, Rimerman & Co and Moss Adams) appear in the top three.

Changing auditors isn’t for the faint of heart; transitioning to a new auditor involves a lot of coordination and document exchange. This can disrupt internal processes and be a drain on resources, especially for smaller funds, so regardless of the fund category, those that decided to take the plunge in the past 12 months clearly had what they felt were compelling reasons to do so. And when they did, there wasn’t necessarily a beeline straight to the Big Four.

Editor's Picks

• Hedge Funds Bet on Europe in Hunt for Next Leg of Stock Rally
• Private-Credit Firms Awash in Cash Boost Hiring
• Private Equity’s Sports Deal Machine Kicks in With Women’s Soccer
• Real Estate Secondaries on the Cusp of a Golden Age
• VC fundraising falls to a multi-year low
   

Asset managers are spending more time and money on building out a more robust middle and back-office function than ever before. That’s partly because of regulatory changes, which make more demands of an asset manager from a compliance perspective. And it’s partly because they are realizing that this can provide a competitive advantage, helping them to differentiate themselves from their competitors and peers (as this article by Gen II Fund Services explains).

And it’s also partly because allocators / LPs are digging ever deeper into the nooks and crannies of an investment manager’s middle and back office as part of their decision-making process around an allocation.

The operational due diligence (ODD) effort of an investor was not always so intense. In years gone by, asset managers simply wanted to know that the manager had certain service providers in place – and that these providers existed. Less attention was paid to the ins and outs of the provider. Today, however, allocators / LPs want to know why a manager uses a specific service provider, what the terms of the agreements are, whether they have changed service providers, any conflicts of interest, and whether those service providers have been in the news in the past few years (in a good way or a bad way – but mostly bad).

Until recently, investors had to compile the information they wanted relating to their asset manager’s key service providers – auditors, custodians, prime brokers in the hedge fund space, and fund administrators – manually. But technology is helping them to not only maintain this data but get ahead of the curve in terms of the ODD process by analyzing the Form ADV data to help build a picture of an asset manager ahead of an ODD meeting.

Data collected by 9AT tracks more than 2,000 service providers to private fund advisers in the US. This enables an ODD person / team at a fund of funds, a pension plan, endowment, insurance company or foundation to ask better questions during the ODD meeting. They are using it to confirm that the service providers in the PPM are those on the Form ADV, and if not, asking what has changed; they can see if there has been a change in auditor over time, which many consider something of a red flag; they can ask why a smaller, newer manager may be using brand-name service providers, which are sometimes more costly, when a different provider will be sufficient; and they can even conduct their own risk analysis on service providers from a diversification point of view, in the sense that they may have too much exposure to a certain service provider if that provider is used by many of the investor’s underlying fund managers.

Portfolio analytics technology has been around for many years, allowing allocators and LPs to build a comprehensive picture of the underlying exposures of the private funds in their stable, in turn enabling their investment due diligence (IDD) function to identify areas where they have too much risk exposure, or not enough. Now, finally, technology is providing the ODD practitioners with better tools to support what is an increasingly important part of the overall due diligence effort, enabling them to not only be better at being reactive, but more importantly, be proactive.

Editor's Picks

• Risk Models Behind World’s Best Hedge Fund Strategy Are Getting a Lot Harder to Crack
• Resilient private credit fills a growing need across U.S. and Europe
• Private equity turns to new fundraising tactics in tough market
• Cash-Flush Buyers Dip Into Distressed Commercial Real Estate
• Global Venture Capital Outlook: The Latest Trends