Cascata Solutions, the leading digital waterfall fund administration software provider, is pleased to announce a strategic partnership with ZEDRA, an industry recognized provider of Global Expansion and Corporate Services, Active Wealth, Pensions & Incentives, and Fund Solutions.
The partnership highlights ZEDRA’s leadership position to deliver greater client value through “smart waterfall automation” leveraging the Cascata Platform for carried interest and fee administration to their private equity, private credit, venture capital and real estate clients. Distribution waterfall is the single most important responsibility for a fund administrator as it is the alignment of the interests of investors with the general partner and, transparency of profits and performance incentives for a job well done. Yet, such calculations bring high risk because of the industry’s modus operandi based on key personnel dependency, manual and time-consuming processes and Excel work that is error-prone amid an ever-changing regulatory landscape e.g., the recent SEC private fund advisor reform. “Our partnership with Cascata marks another major milestone in our global fund solutions expansion and delivery of tailored, value-add services leveraging our multi-disciplinary expertise and smart automation for our alternative investment manager clients”, says Maarten Robberts, ZEDRA Managing Director. He continues to say, “with the Cascata Platform’s standardized accounting best practices and full formula transparency, our staff no longer manages independent Excel spreadsheets, and are delivering a digital client experience with higher quality of service and assurance on the accuracy of reported carried interest and fees”. “Cascata has solved the shortcomings of other waterfall vendor solutions and delivers the most crucial functionality for fund accountants’ production operation and 100% self-administration. As a result, our clients have elevated their operating standard well-above Excel and are achieving 40% or more efficiency gains”, says Charles Dooley, Cascata CEO. About ZEDRA ZEDRA is a global powerhouse providing Corporate & Global Expansion, Active Wealth, Pension & Incentive services and Fund Solutions, all aligned under one common goal: to DO MORE so their clients can ACHIEVE MORE. ZEDRA’s highly experienced team of 1,000 people across 16 countries spanning Asia, Oceania, the Americas, and Europe deliver tailored high-quality solutions to its clients that include high net worth individuals and their families, family offices, entrepreneurs, corporates, pension plans, fund promoters, asset managers and investors. About Cascata Cascata Solutions delivers advanced digital software solutions for private capital fund administrators and their clients, to modernize their back-office operation for distribution waterfall administration and more. The leadership team brings 30+ years of experience and has deep knowledge and understanding of private equity fund accounting and all the nuances with the varying investment vehicles and waterfall arrangements.
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Attract/Retain Talent and Deliver Greater Client Value One of the most important and complex back-office responsibilities for fund administrators on behalf of their clients is to properly calculate and allocate carried interest to investors. Any misallocation of profits can turn the investor relationship sideways and lead to reputational damage and client churn. In the past, firms that were capable of recruiting and retaining high-skilled talent had consistently achieved a competitive edge. However, amid fierce competition and rising compensation for highly sought-after back-office personnel, is proving very difficult for these firms to keep pace with their growth and sustain a high operating and service-delivery standard. In a recent E&Y survey, more than 100 COOs and CFOs in the private equity industry shared that besides asset growth, talent management and enhancing back-office processes were of utmost priority. Consequently, fund administrators are shifting their attention to waterfall automation to drive a digital culture to attract, retain and scale their back-office organization. While Excel has been the industry ‘universal’ standard amongst fund accountants to perform their work, the Cascata solution is designed for fund accountants to elevate their operating standard well beyond Excel to a fully ‘digital experience’ with automated processes and workflows, standardized waterfall calculation best practices and 100% self-administration. Fund accountants no longer must manage independent Excel spreadsheets making it easier for reporting and freeing up invaluable time to focus on more strategic tasks. The net result is increased employee efficiency, performance and satisfaction that ultimately results in improved talent management and increased client value and trust. If you are interested in learning more or requesting a demo of the Cascata digital waterfall fund administration platform, please contact us at info@cascata-solutions.com or click this link. EFSI, a leading alternative investment fund administrator, and Cascata Solutions, the leading automated waterfall fund administration software provider, are pleased to announce a strategic partnership that will deliver an advanced digital experience for back-office carried interest, management fee and expense accounting and administration for EFSI’s clients spanning private equity, private credit, real estate, hedge funds and hybrid funds.
The continued pace of growth of the private equity industry brings added risk for fund administrators because their ‘modus operandi’ is based on key-personnel, manual data and processes, and Excel-based work. This is making it difficult for them to scale and keep pace with new fund launches and client growth, increasing investor demands and changing regulatory landscape. Likewise, with the blurring of open- and closed-end funds and hedge funds making inroads into the private equity space, many are out of their “swimming lane” with limited private equity operations and accounting experience, technology, and best practices. Consequently, waterfall administration has become a high value area for digitalization with increasing commercial acceptance. “While waterfall innovation has been around for a while, we have delivered the critical “last several miles” of functionality that addresses the major product shortcomings of other vendor offerings. As a result, we have been privileged to partner with fund administrators like EFSI that are taking a leadership position to deliver greater client value through digital-enabled services leveraging the Cascata platform”, says Chuck Dooley, Cascata CEO and co-founder. “Our partnership with Cascata highlights our continued commitment to innovation. We are raising the bar with Cascata to achieve operational scale and service-level gains and deliver an enhanced fund accounting and administration service with standardized ‘system-level’ waterfall and accounting best practices, digitization of all pertinent fund information and a full-fledged Excel model output with formula transparency, that makes it much easier for my team’s reporting to our clients and auditors without having to manage our own individual spreadsheets”, added Anthony Mascia, EFSI Managing Member. Cascata Solutions, the leader in automated waterfall fund administration software and services for private capital administrators and their clients, announced today a new software release that addresses the major impediments to the commercial adoption of back-office waterfall digital technology. Most paramount is the delivery of formula transparency in a full-fledged Excel model for all key system-generated calculations such as preferred return, e.g. IRR, simple compounding, or interest on net contribution for American and European-style waterfall arrangements. The system-generated Excel model makes it easy for fund administrators to share the waterfall/carried interest results with auditors and their clients.
“Waterfall innovation has been available for well over a decade. However, because of major shortcomings such as system-level formula transparency, waterfall model coverage, and limited ease of use, the continued dependency on Excel and people-driven operating models prevailed”, says Maarten Robberts, managing director at Atlas Fund Services recently acquired by Zedra. “With Cascata’s full-formula transparency, fund administrators can rely on a systematic approach and no longer have to manage their own Excel spreadsheets for traceability of their calculations and disclosed financials.” Another major feature in Cascata’s software release is a conditional, user-defined carried interest calculation engine. Most waterfall software solutions have been designed with the most basic static rules to support a standard lot of carried interest models typically with 4-5 steps (“cascades”) such as the return of capital, preferred return, catch up, and final split. However, for anything more sophisticated, it is typically dependent on the vendor’s professional services to enhance and hard code the logic in the system to support these more challenging models. “Our solution has been designed and purpose-built from the very beginning for fund accountants for mainstream back-office deployment and 100% self-administration,” says Patrick Brunner, co-founder & director of product strategy. He continues to say, “the conditional, user-defined calculation engine completes the last and most important mile of functionality as it offers our clients an easy, Excel-like rules engine to support the most sophisticated models that may have conditional gates, specific formulistic algorithms and require external data input.” |
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November 2023
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Cascata Solutions is dedicated to delivering advanced digital cloud solutions for private equity, asset managers and fund administrators to modernize their back office operation for distribution waterfall administration and more.
The founding team brings 30+ years of experience delivering technology and business transformation programs for leading financial services institutions and aims to replicate its success to help the private equity market redefine its operating model and create competitive advantage amid market uncertainty, increased competition and investor and regulatory scrutiny. |
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99 Wall Street Suite 2501 New York, NY 10005 info@cascata-solutions.com Phone: (212) 355-4628 Toll Free: (800) 665-2816 |
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