Responding to investor and regulator scrutiny

Private equity and venture fund managers face an increasing barrage of detailed and probing questions daily. Examples:

• “What is the exposure of your portfolio to a downturn in the transportation sector?”
• “How many of your companies have published environmental sustainability plans?”
• “Can you document how you arrived at that valuation?”

The source of this inquisition? Current investors, prospective new funders, and, sometimes, government regulators. In other words, people whose questions must be answered. Which is why VC and PE managers are spending ever more time on scavenger hunts through folders of spreadsheets, PDFs, and email chains.

And if you’re thinking there can’t help but be a better way, there is. Cloud-based portfolio monitoring platforms can now gather, analyze, and report the financial and performance data from every company in a VC or PE firm’s portfolio. Users of these systems extoll their time savings, error reduction and risk-management improvements. And, not least, such platforms make it much easier to respond to investor questions, due diligence reviews, and regulatory inquiries.

Here’s what these groups are asking for most, and where a portfolio monitoring solution can help firms give it to them: