Building a team of modern administrators

Running your business is complex—there’s capital to raise, deals to source, and investor relationships to develop and maintain, all while handling the day-to-day tasks necessary to produce and send reports and manage ongoing administrative, tax, and accounting activities.

Most CFOs choose to work with a third-party administrator so they can focus on the enterprise-building activities that help their business grow. As Tana Gardner, CFO of Affinius Capital (formerly USAA Real Estate), said, “We’re focusing on what we can be really good at, and we don't want to be really good at fund administration. We want to be really good at investing and serving our investors.”

When you outsource fund administration, you are tapping into a team of individual accountants with years of experience and getting access to tenured professionals who can oversee financial reporting. Working with a third-party administrator helps ensure the work is accurate and the details of your fund are handled correctly and efficiently, no matter how complex they become. Your fund administrator can also provide expert advice, insights, and examples of what other successful GPs in your space are doing (or what less successful GPs have done and you need to be wary of) so your firm can outperform.

Many institutional investors expect GPs to have a third-party fund administrator to manage the books and records. Some even require it as a condition of their allocation. An outside fund administrator creates that extra layer of oversight and review so investors can trust the information is accurate.

And yet, according to a Preqin Special Report on Service Providers, more than 30% of GPs switch administrators every year, often a time-consuming and costly process. This highlights the importance of selecting the right team from the beginning. Ultimately, our approach to administration helps us deliver more value to GPs, create a better experience for investors, and provide the type of collaborative environment where talented administrators want to work.

As Christine Egbert, General Manager, Fund Administration, said, “The private markets are long overdue for an upgrade. In the past decade, trillions in investor assets have poured into the space, yet administrators haven’t innovated to keep pace. At Juniper Square, we get to rewrite the playbook for fund administration while scaling a world-class service organization that delivers a truly modern solution to its clients.”

Because we're a digital-first firm, we can go wherever there are concentrations of top fund administration talent. Regardless of the location, we look for five main things in our fund accountants and administration professionals:

• Expertise in fund administration and a partnership mindset

• A desire to collaborate with our clients and internal technology teams to find solutions to help firms operate more efficiently and make GPs’ lives easier

• An understanding of how to use technology and an appreciation for its importance in helping deliver value to GPs and their investors

• A focus on investor needs and how administrators contribute to the investor experience

• A commitment to Juniper Square’s mission of transforming the administration industry and making the world’s private capital markets more efficient, transparent, and accessible.

Once on board, our accountants work in a team structure. Each accounting team is typically made up of five to eight individuals, led by an experienced leader. This structure provides opportunities for feedback and mentorship and ensures that there’s back-up.

The Juniper Square administration team has experience working in multiple industries, deep technical expertise, and strong client communication skills. Collectively, they’ve handled administration for real estate, buyout, growth, venture, family office, hedge funds, and private credit at some of the industry’s most respected fund managers and administrators.

They’ve led significant initiatives, solved complex finance and administration challenges, developed high-performing teams, and are committed to modernizing administration processes to better serve both GPs and LPs. They understand deadlines, complex financial situations and structures, the unique needs of different types of investors, and how to improve everything from document creation to collaborating with auditors.

In order to create the best administration experience possible, we know Juniper Square needs employees with a diverse set of skills, and not just in accounting and finance. Our technology experts have a track record of building modern solutions to fund administration challenges. Working at the intersection of innovation and administration, Juniper Square delivers a universal platform to support GPs across the investment lifecycle and is changing how fund accountants work.

We know no two funds are exactly alike. Juniper Square has the experience to support real estate, private equity, venture capital, family offices, natural resources, separate accounts, and multi-strategy investment firms (among others). We can also support complex fund structures, including open-ended funds, master-feeder funds, offshore entities, and parallel funds. Avanath Capital Management, for instance, initially managed its fund administration activities in-house, but once they launched a large open-end fund, Avanath’s leadership recognized the need for a third-party fund administrator who not only understood the intricacies of that fund structure but also valued technology as much as they did. That’s why Wesley Wilson, CFO of Avanath, and his team chose Juniper Square.

The private markets are changing fast, and GPs need an administration partner who can help them navigate the shifting terrain. Increasing complexity means what once might have required input only from accounting and finance professionals now benefits from the thinking of other experts. That’s why we bring together a collection of data analysts, designers, product managers, and software engineers to work with our administration team to suggest feature enhancements that can solve problems and deliver value to our customers across all asset classes. We believe this sort of collaboration not only sets us apart from other administrators, it provides our administration team with unique insights into how tasks can be improved and made more efficient.

Only 15% of administrators believe they have a very strong forward-thinking approach. At Juniper Square, we develop industry-leading software solutions for the private markets industry based on the insights we’ve gained from the nearly 2,000 GPs using our investment management software. That gives us comprehensive and near real-time insight into what GPs expect from administrators and the challenges they face in running their businesses. Our approach prioritizes the LP experience, helps you structure and find value in their data, and delivers accuracy and efficiency-enhancing automation while providing visibility, access, and control.

We believe technology, innovation, and automation not only reduce risk but also create an environment where our teams can deliver better outcomes for our clients and their investors. We guide each client through a rigorous data evaluation and structuring process. Their data is structured according to best practices we’ve learned from serving a huge range of GPs. Investor information is structured so that things like account details, additional contacts, and notification preferences are reviewed, cleaned, and entered accurately into the Juniper Square platform.

Once onboarding is complete, we add client-configured requests to our standard capital call, distribution, and other notices. This process ensures there are fewer issues around missing data. And because data is standardized in one centralized platform, our administrators don’t have to switch between different data formats for different clients, which makes it easier to deliver accurate and timely information. Standardization helps create a better experience for our teams and provides reassurance to our administration customers.

Tasks done within the Juniper Square system are stable and consistent, and formulas can’t be incorrectly entered or broken when columns move, and someone used vlookup instead of index match. Automatic waterfall engines, capital call calculators, in-system statement creation, and direct links between the investor portal and investment statements reduce the chance of errors. Automation can also make it easier to report to investors, close the books, or speed up distributions.

For our clients, our integrated systems offer a level of reviewability that provides reassurance and security. As opposed to reviewing a stack of distribution notices created via mail merge, a manager can log into the platform, and review automatically generated statements that tie directly to an investor’s account. After reviewing, you can approve it for release or send it back for further review. Ultimately, this means that your investors can get access to information faster—which helps strengthen LP relationships and secure future commitments and referrals.

Standardization made the public markets more transparent, accessible, and trustworthy. Our administration team strives to deliver the same benefits of standardization to our clients in the private markets.

As your investors demand more, our administration team provides the credibility and transparency they require. Our team delivers a seamless experience through an industry-leading investor portal that modernizes the entire process from onboarding to the delivery of documents and reports all the way through wind-down or redemption. Everything is done in a secure environment that can be accessed anytime, from anywhere. Our uniquely scalable technology platform features built-in compliance, data security, automated reporting, and enhanced transparency.

The result?

Greater efficiency, reduced operational risk, and higher investor confidence.
GPs deserve a modern approach to administration, and our team can deliver it. If you're interested in working with—or for—Juniper Square, contact us or check out our open positions.