How Ocorian is harnessing fund administration technology to improve the client experience
The demands on asset managers private markets' back-office teams are expanding and evolving at an unprecedented rate. Ocorian’s Global Fund Services co-heads Yegor Lanovenko and Ben Hill discuss how fund administration technology will be an essential tool for managing intensifying workloads and improving the client experience.
The remarkable growth trajectory of the private markets industry during the last decade has ramped up the reporting demands on managers' back offices.
Global private markets assets under management have almost tripled since 2012, increasing to $25 trillion by 2023, according to EY analysis.[1] And according to Ocorian’s Global Asset Monitor, the value of global assets jumped to a record $246.8 trillion in 2024, up 11.5% year-on-year. The staggering $25.5 trillion increase was the largest annual increase on record and was the equivalent of adding two European stock markets or almost two extra private capital markets to the global asset pile in a single year. As investors have allocated increasing amounts of capital to private markets, expectations of the frequency and detail of reporting have naturally risen.
Managers who used to be able to run their franchise using email and spreadsheets with lean back-office teams have had to invest in upgrading technology platforms and operational models to keep pace with expanding investor demands, a significant and ongoing investment cost.
Regulatory oversight of private markets has also increased as the industry has matured, placing further strain on back-office infrastructure, alongside increasingly sophisticated financing and investment structures. NAV loans, continuation fund vehicles and democratisation of the investor base are just some of the trends that require significant back-office resources to deploy, monitor and report on.
Fund technology powering the client experience
Technology is now essential for managing growing reporting, regulatory and operational obligations.
“Private markets are changing, evolving and expanding at an unprecedented rate,” says Yegor Lanovenko, Co-Head of Global Fund Services at Ocorian. “Fund technology is the only way that we're going to be able to scale the expertise that we have across our teams, leverage data in new ways and keep up with the pace of change that we see in the market.”
As technology becomes ever more important for private markets' back offices, managers are turning to premium tech-enabled fund administration partners like Ocorian to provide the scale and expertise to deploy technology solutions.
“The structures that we now see in private markets are far more complex than what we've ever encountered before,” Ocorian Global Fund Services Co-Head Ben Hill says. “There are far more data points to capture, and without technology, capturing that data becomes cumbersome and expensive. Rather than having an army of people on standby, waiting to input numbers into a system, technology provides the tools to extract data from all sources efficiently and systematically. It is the only way that we really can service the type of mandates we see.”
Evolving client requirements have seen Ocorian place technology at the centre of its long-term fund services strategy.
“Clients want to be able to self-serve data. They want real time access and the scope to slice and dice their data in any way that they want,” Lanovenko says. “Our job is to ensure that we have very robust technology architecture in place, and that we are continuing to invest in our technology stack to ensure that our clients have access to the best automation, data visualisation and on-demand data tools available.”
A consultative approach
The successful implementation of technology to meet client expectations, however, requires more than deep technical expertise. Understanding a client’s commercial objectives and tailoring systems to meet their needs is key to delivering effective outcomes.
“Staying close to clients, understanding what they require and then designing solutions that fit those requirements, but are also scalable and replicable, is an integral part of the process,” Hill says. “We work hard to make sure that we can deliver asset classes, fund types, and structures for all private markets.”
Designing and implementing scalable solutions that provide clients with tangible value requires significant upfront planning and design work.
As a multi-jurisdictional service provider, Ocorian has standardised processes across all of its teams, in all locations . This has allowed the firm to leverage automation and machine learning, and replace manual processes with optical character recognition (OCR), a technology that turns text images into machine-readable data.
“When you have standardised processes and a globally consistent operating model, you can really drill down into where automation opportunities exist across those processes, and then determine what can be done in-house or with off-the-shelf tools, and where help from third-party vendors is required,” Lanovenko says.
Ocorian has moved away from supporting every asset class and fund structure with separate software solutions. We have selected eFront as our technology platform of choice, avoiding the complexities that come with managing multiple vendors and eliminating the need to consolidate data from myriad systems and databases.
“We can do everything that we need within our one core platform. Clients like the idea of having everything in one place. It reduces the risk of things like data mismatches and avoids prolonged data consolidation processes,” Lanovenko says.
A single core tech stack also smooths out bottlenecks in client and investor onboarding and mitigates cybersecurity risk as data is not fragmented across different data warehouses and systems, making it easier to track and monitor.
Harnessing AI in fund administration
Looking ahead, Lanovenko sees exciting opportunities to harness AI to drive further efficiencies across private markets back offices.
“We have already deployed generative AI with a ‘first draft principle’, and we are exploring how much work can be done upfront in areas like preparing board minutes and reports, and then how to layer expertise on top of that. That really changes how teams think about their own skills and jobs, and the value they can add for clients,” Lanovenko says, adding that dovetailing AI with technologies like OCR has the potential to accelerate automation in complex asset classes like fund-of-funds.
The implementation of any new technology, however, has to be done through the lens of how it helps the client, rather than investing in technology for technology’s sake, Hill says.
“We are constantly speaking to clients about their challenges and also current and future requirements. The first step is to see whether the technology that we have at our fingertips can provide a solution, and then review what else is out there to make sure that we are always offering a fully rounded and efficient service to the client,” Hill says. “We develop our competitive advantage by being able to package technology in a way that is scalable, unified by consistent data architecture and solves a real problem for clients.”
About Ocorian Fund Services
We help asset managers unlock value from their private markets funds and structures by providing a global, high-touch, technology-first approach to operational excellence across their operations based on expertise, global scale and building long-lasting partnerships.
For more information, visit our fund technology page or contact our fund services team.
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