Features in Alternative Investment Management Software
for Investment Management
Specialized tools for managing private equity, real estate, infrastructure, and other alternative investments that are common in pension portfolios. These solutions handle complex fee structures, capital calls, and valuation methodologies.
We ask vendors to mark their product against our feature list. It is not available for all products and in some cases we have derived data from publicly available sources. The list of features follows. Vendors can add a further 10 key features of their own.
Cash Flow Management
Features for tracking, projecting, and managing investment cash flows
- Capital call tracking
- Tools to track and manage capital calls from investments
- Cash flow alert system
- Automated notifications for upcoming cash flow events
- Cash flow forecasting
- Ability to project future cash flows based on historical patterns and commitments
- Cash flow projection horizon
- Maximum time period for cash flow projections
- Cash flow visualization
- Visual tools for understanding cash flow patterns
- Commitment tracking
- Tools to track committed, called, and uncalled capital
- Currency handling
- Ability to manage cash flows in multiple currencies
- Distribution tracking
- Tools to track and categorize distributions from investments
- In-kind distribution handling
- Functionality to manage and track in-kind distributions
- J-curve analysis
- Tools to analyze and visualize the J-curve effect in private investments
- Recallable distribution tracking
- Ability to track distributions that could potentially be recalled
- Waterfall calculations
- Ability to model and calculate complex distribution waterfalls
Compliance & Governance
Features related to regulatory compliance, investment guidelines, and governance
- Approval workflows
- Configurable approval processes for investment actions
- Audit trails
- Comprehensive logging of system actions for audit purposes
- Breach notification
- Automated alerts for investment guideline breaches
- Compliance rule library
- Number of pre-built compliance rules available
- Conflict of interest tracking
- Tools to identify and manage potential conflicts of interest
- Document retention policies
- Enforcement of document retention requirements
- ESG compliance monitoring
- Tools to monitor compliance with ESG investment policies
- Fee validation
- Tools to validate manager fees against agreements
- GIPS compliance
- Support for Global Investment Performance Standards
- Investment guideline monitoring
- Automated monitoring of compliance with investment guidelines
- Regulatory compliance reporting
- Support for regulatory reporting requirements specific to pension funds
- Role-based access control
- Granular control over user permissions and data access
Data Management & Integration
Features related to data handling, integration, and quality control
- API availability
- Presence of APIs for integration with other systems
- Accounting system integration
- Built-in connections to common accounting platforms
- Data audit trail
- Tracking of all data changes with user information
- Data extraction tools
- Tools for extracting data from reports and documents
- Data import automation
- Automated tools for importing data from various sources
- Data quality scoring
- Metrics for assessing and reporting on data quality
- Data validation rules
- Configurable rules to ensure data accuracy and consistency
- Data warehousing
- Enterprise data warehousing capabilities
- Document management
- Tools for storing, categorizing, and retrieving investment documents
- Excel add-in functionality
- Dedicated Excel integration for data analysis
- Historical data storage
- Maximum period for storing historical data
- Integration with custodians
- Direct integration with custodian data feeds
- Market data feeds
- Integration with market data providers
Fund Manager Due Diligence
Features for evaluating, selecting, and monitoring fund managers
- Document repository
- Centralized storage for manager documents and research
- Due diligence workflow
- Structured workflows for manager evaluation and selection
- ESG manager assessment
- Tools to evaluate managers' ESG capabilities and alignment
- Manager capacity
- Maximum number of managers that can be tracked in the system
- Manager database
- Comprehensive database of alternative investment managers
- Manager exposure analysis
- Analysis of exposure to various managers across the portfolio
- Manager meeting notes
- Structured system for recording and retrieving manager meeting notes
- Manager performance tracking
- Tools to track and analyze manager performance over time
- Peer group comparison
- Ability to compare managers against relevant peer groups
- RFP management
- Tools to create, distribute, and analyze RFPs to managers
- Style drift detection
- Tools to identify manager deviation from stated investment approaches
- Track record verification
- Tools to verify and analyze manager track records
Liability & ALM Management
Features specific to pension fund liability management and asset-liability matching
- Actuarial data integration
- Ability to incorporate actuarial data into analyses
- Asset-liability matching
- Analysis of how assets align with liability requirements
- Cash flow matching
- Tools to match investment cash flows with liability payments
- Contribution forecasting
- Projections of required sponsor contributions
- Demographic analysis
- Analysis of plan participant demographics
- Funding ratio analysis
- Tools to track and project pension funding ratios
- Glide path monitoring
- Tools to track progress along a defined glide path strategy
- Liability hedging analytics
- Analysis of hedging effectiveness against liabilities
- Liability modeling
- Tools to model pension liabilities and projections
- Liability projection horizon
- Maximum time period for liability projections
- Liability-driven investment (LDI) support
- Specialized tools for LDI strategies
- Surplus risk metrics
- Measures of risk to pension surplus
Performance Measurement
Features for tracking, calculating, and analyzing investment performance
- Custom benchmark creation
- Ability to create and use custom benchmarks for performance comparison
- DPI metrics
- Distributed to Paid-In Capital ratio calculation
- Historical performance tracking
- Length of performance history that can be maintained
- IRR calculation
- Ability to calculate Internal Rate of Return at different levels (fund, portfolio, asset class)
- Money-weighted returns
- Calculation of money-weighted return metrics
- PME analysis
- Public Market Equivalent analysis to compare private investments against public benchmarks
- Performance attribution
- Analysis of performance drivers and contributors
- Performance calculation frequency
- How often performance metrics can be automatically calculated
- Quartile ranking
- Ability to rank investments against peers by quartile
- RVPI metrics
- Residual Value to Paid-In Capital ratio calculation
- TVPI metrics
- Total Value to Paid-In Capital ratio calculation
- Time-weighted returns
- Calculation of time-weighted return metrics
- Vintage year benchmarking
- Ability to benchmark against similar vintage year investments
Portfolio Management
Features related to managing alternative investment portfolios including allocation, tracking, and analysis
- Asset allocation modeling
- Tools to model optimal portfolio allocations across alternative asset classes based on risk/return profiles
- Commitment pacing
- Functionality to plan and track capital commitment schedules over time
- Custom categorization
- Ability to create custom investment categories and hierarchies
- Fund capacity
- Maximum number of funds that can be managed in the system
- Liquidity forecasting
- Tools to project future liquidity needs and available capital
- Look-through capabilities
- Ability to analyze underlying holdings within fund structures
- Multi-asset class support
- Ability to handle various alternative investments including private equity, hedge funds, real estate, infrastructure, and other non-traditional assets
- Portfolio construction tools
- Advanced tools for building portfolios that align with investment objectives and constraints
- Portfolio optimization
- Advanced algorithms for portfolio optimization based on various constraints
- Target allocation tracking
- Tools to monitor actual allocations against targets
- Vintage year analysis
- Tools to analyze performance by investment vintage years
- What-if scenario analysis
- Ability to model hypothetical portfolio changes and their potential impacts
Reporting & Analytics
Features for generating reports and performing advanced analytics
- Ad-hoc analysis
- Tools for performing on-the-fly analysis without pre-built reports
- Attribution analysis
- Detailed attribution of returns across various factors
- Board-level reporting
- Pre-built templates for investment committee and board reporting
- Customizable reporting
- Ability to create and customize reports for different stakeholders
- Data visualization tools
- Advanced charts, graphs, and other visualization capabilities
- Export capabilities
- Options to export data to various formats (Excel, PDF, etc.)
- Historical reporting
- Ability to generate reports for any historical time period
- ILPA reporting compliance
- Support for Institutional Limited Partners Association reporting standards
- Interactive dashboards
- Configurable dashboards with key metrics and visualizations
- Regulatory reporting
- Support for required regulatory reporting frameworks
- Report generation speed
- Time taken to generate complex reports
- Report scheduling
- Ability to schedule automated report generation and distribution
- Report template library
- Number of pre-built report templates available
Risk Management
Features for measuring, monitoring, and managing investment risks
- Concentration risk analysis
- Tools to identify and monitor concentration risks across various dimensions
- Counterparty risk tracking
- Monitoring exposure to various counterparties
- Drawdown analysis
- Analysis of investment drawdowns and recovery periods
- ESG risk assessment
- Tools to evaluate environmental, social, and governance risks
- Liquidity risk assessment
- Tools to assess and monitor portfolio liquidity risks
- Monte Carlo simulation
- Probabilistic modeling of potential outcomes using Monte Carlo methods
- Risk budgeting
- Tools for allocating risk across portfolio segments
- Risk factor decomposition
- Breaking down risk into component factors
- Risk reporting frequency
- How frequently risk metrics are updated
- Sensitivity analysis
- Tools to assess portfolio sensitivity to various factors
- Stress testing
- Ability to model portfolio behavior under stressed market conditions
- Value at Risk (VaR)
- VaR calculation capabilities for alternative investments
Technical & Operational
Technical capabilities, deployment options, and operational features
- Cloud deployment option
- Availability of cloud-based deployment
- Customization capabilities
- Extent to which the system can be customized without vendor involvement
- Disaster recovery
- Comprehensive disaster recovery capabilities
- Implementation time
- Typical time required for system implementation
- Mobile accessibility
- Access to system functionality via mobile devices
- Multi-factor authentication
- Enhanced security through multi-factor authentication
- On-premises deployment option
- Availability of on-premises installation
- Single sign-on
- Support for enterprise single sign-on solutions
- Support hours
- Hours of available technical support per week
- System response time
- Average time for system to respond to standard queries
- System uptime
- Guaranteed system availability percentage
- Training resources
- Availability of comprehensive training materials and programs
- User concurrency
- Maximum number of simultaneous users supported