Future of the Private Capital CFO: Insights from Global Custodian Research

Our latest research on the future private capital CFO has been featured within Global Custodian this month.

Our report entitled The future private capital CFO: Evolving in a digital age revealed that chief financial officers (CFOs) of private capital funds expect investor demands for an enriched and more frequent date to intensify over the next few years.

The findings highlighted that CFOs are gearing up to meet demands for real-time or quasi-real-time data about the status of their investments. Some 64% of respondents expect their investors to be looking for access to live or daily updates on portfolio performance and 57% on cyber-security. At the same time, 50% of CFO participants and 55% of investors are expecting a need for live or daily updates on operational SLAs.

The Global Custodian piece quotes Chitra Baskar, our Chief Operating Officer and Global Head of Funds and Product, on the findings.

Those allocating money to private capital funds will often have had significant exposure to traded markets, where they are accustomed to high degrees of transparency,” she says.

Coming from a mindset that is constantly looking at the data, they bring that investment culture to the private markets, where, Chitra suggests, “the relative lack of information leaves them less comfortable than they would like”.

The article went on to discuss how respondents expect technological expertise to be top of the list in the next three years – particularly in the US and UK. This is confirmed anecdotally by the growing trend to include coding and software proficiency in advertised job requirements for new hires for financial positions. Plugging that knowledge gap will not, however, be a solution in itself as the more technology allows for streamlined and efficient data outflows, the more investors are likely to realise the information opportunities that these advances have the potential to provide.

The Global Custodian article can be found online here, on pages 24-25.

The findings of our research can be found here.