Private Equity is Captivating the Next Gen, but with Obscure Data, the Risks and Challenges of Tracking Exposure are Significant
Lack of standardization and transparency in data reporting makes it hard for UHNW families to track exposure, evaluate performance, and make informed decisions across diverse PE holdings.
According to the Global Family Office 2024 Survey report, 47% of family offices expressed the most bullishness toward direct private equity. That momentum is increasingly driven by the next generation, who see private equity as a strategic lever for long-term value creation.
What draws them in is its potential for outsized returns and portfolio diversification, especially compared to public markets. Private equity aligns with their long-term mindset—it reflects how they think about wealth: patient, strategic, and growth-oriented. Their ability to keep a track of this is weighed down by lack of standardization and transparency in data across diverse PE holdings causing delayed reporting. With layered and delayed access to current allocations and commitments, they are held back from well informed or timely decision making. What they need is a unified performance reporting and accounting software—purpose-built to match their urgency, precision, and strategic mindset.
The Next-Gen Psyche: Raised on Insight, Hungry for Control
They’ve grown up with access—portfolios, performance dashboards, liquidity snapshots. And yet, stepping into private equity reveals something jarring: the most important part of the portfolio is often the least visible. As they take on responsibility, many next-gen leaders find themselves asking foundational questions—questions that reveal just how disconnected their private equity data really is.
- What’s the IRR on that fund—how has it performed over time and with respect to other funds in the same vintage in the portfolio and with expected multiples?
- How much capital is uncalled—how does that impact tax efficient liquidity planning?
- Where are the distributions going—to which entities, accounts, or beneficiaries, and in what amounts, when, and why? Are they accounted for accurately?
These are fundamental questions. Yet for most next-gen leaders, the answers arrive slowly, wrapped in spreadsheets, buried in PDFs, or interpreted through advisors. The answers exist—but they’re buried under versioned spreadsheets, inconsistent updates given by General Partners, and reporting timelines that don’t align across entities.
Why Most Investment Reporting Software Solutions Fall Short
Traditional investment reporting tools weren’t built for how next-gen leaders operate—or for how private equity behaves. Most systems do one thing well: basic accounting or surface-level aggregation. But they rarely go deep enough to meet the complexity of private equity. Here’s where they fall short:
- No visibility of committed capital: Most systems can’t provide a real-time view of what’s been committed, what’s uncalled, and what’s been distributed across funds.
- No integrated accounting: Accounting and investment data live in separate systems, requiring double entry and creating delays and errors in reporting.
- No look-through across entities: When ownership is spread across multiple trusts, partnerships, and individuals, most systems can’t consolidate performance or exposure in one view. This makes it difficult for next-gen leaders to understand who owns what, where the value sits, or how capital flows across the entire family structure.
- Static performance metrics: IRR and TWR figures are often outdated. There’s no way to track performance against the benchmark of choice—be it a public market equivalent (PME) index, internal target, or manager-level expectation. Strategy, Vintage and fund-specific insights are missing.
- No real-time readiness: Reports arrive after decisions are made. Data is delayed, scattered, and dependent on manual cleanup. Next-gen leaders are stuck waiting for numbers to be reconciled and explained, instead of having direct access when it matters most.
The result? Next-gen family office leaders are unable to act decisively on private equity due to delayed, fragmented data. Capital calls are missed or delayed, and investment reviews are incomplete, with performance data scattered across spreadsheets, PDFs, and emails. Without real-time visibility into committed or uncalled capital, strategic decisions become reactive, forcing leaders to wait for data reconciliation and undermining their ability to lead with confidence.
Asset Vantage Investment Reporting Software: Designed for the Way Next-Gen Invests
Asset Vantage isn’t just a supplementary tool or standalone reporting system; it’s a comprehensive data backbone that integrates every piece of private equity—capital calls, partner-level accounting, IRRs, distributions—into one unified platform. Built by a family office that needed features and functionality that didn’t exist, AV provides a single, reliable source of data for managing private equity and other assets with clarity and precision.
What sets it apart:
- Capital Tracking: Asset Vantage family office software offers real-time visibility into capital commitments, uncalled capital, and upcoming capital calls. This allows next-gen leaders to manage liquidity proactively, reducing the risk of missed opportunities and ensuring capital is available when needed.
- Performance Reporting: Accurate IRR and TWR calculations are provided across funds, entities, and timelines, allowing next-gen leaders to compare performance against their chosen benchmarks like the S&P 500 for a baseline comparison with the broader market. Additionally, leverage custom benchmarks—such as asset class performance, investment strategy outcomes, or advisor-level performance—to assess success based on specific goals and expectations.
- Entity-Level Clarity: Transparent reporting provides a clear view of capital flows across complex structures (such as trusts, partnerships, SPVs, holding companies, and joint ventures), breaking down performance at the partner, entity, advisor and investment level. This helps next-gen leaders understand where value is being created or lost, ensuring control over every aspect of the family’s portfolio.
- Integrated Accounting: By syncing investment and financial data into a single, unified ledger, next-gen leaders eliminate the complexities of double-entry bookkeeping, save hundreds of man hours and reduce the risk of errors. With automated journal entries and real-time data updates, reconciliation is streamlined, ensuring accurate and timely financial reporting. This capability empowers leaders to make faster, more reliable decisions and maintain greater control over their private equity portfolio.
- Configurable Dashboards: The platform allows next-gen leaders to customize dashboards by geography, strategy, family member, or investment category. This makes it easy to focus on the most relevant data, helping them respond quickly to changing market conditions and making high-impact decisions.
This shift from fragmented, manual data to integrated, real-time insights is what it truly means to move from data to decisions. Next-gen leaders can now access accurate, timely financials at their fingertips, allowing them to act on opportunities and risks without delay, making data a powerful tool for strategic action.
Trusted by Next-Gen Family Offices Who Set the Standard
Today, over 350 of the world’s wealthiest families, spanning 10+ countries, rely on Asset Vantage to manage combined assets worth over USD 400 billion. From family office principals to next-gen leaders, advisors, and wealth managers, they trust Asset Vantage to drive efficiency, provide clarity, and support data-driven decision-making.
They act on capital calls faster, walk into investment reviews with real-time insights, and understand performance across structures and timelines without needing interpretation. Leadership shouldn’t wait for reports to be reconciled. To lead and invest with confidence, next-gen leaders need a system that works at the speed of thought.
Request a demo today to experience the data infrastructure that next-gen family office leaders are already using to take control of their investments and drive their legacy forward.
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