Fund Administration
A full-stack back-office solution for every kind of alternative investment fund
Vistra Fund Administration Services
Fund Accounting
Processes that ensure accuracy, consistency and compliance in asset tracking, financial reporting and compliance with regulations
Transfer Agent
SEC-registered transfer agent, SOC 1, Type II audited processes and the most advanced technology in administration for alternatives
Financial Reporting
Reporting customized for GAAP accounting, portfolio management, deal teams, auditors, regulators and investor relations
Tax Services
Leveraging integrated systems to produce, print and deliver timely investor K-1s and 1099s at scale for maximum investor satisfaction
Investor Portal
Customized online access to versatile, interactive investment data for investors and advisors with secure intuitive interface
Compliance
Designed to meet your fund’s regulatory requirements, whatever its size, structure or stage in its lifecycle.
The fund administration solution for funds of any structure, strategy or asset class.
Private Equity
S-11 / N-2 Funds
1031 / DST Programs
Venture Capital
Reg-D
Opportunity Zones
Real Estate
Reg A
Infrastructure
Private Credit
Reg CF
Natural Resources
The Vistra Difference
Experience
Benefit from our decades of fund administration experience, advanced technology and industry relationships.
On-Demand Resources
Sales success can be a liability for a fund when the number of new investors becomes a burden for an in-house fund administration team.
Institutional Quality
Satisfy investor demand for top-tier third-party fund administration essential infrastructure for portfolio funds.
Fund Focus
Remove the distraction of portfolio accounting, shareholder management, financial communications and all aspects of back-office processing
Cost Control
Our flexible service solutions scale with the growth of your fund, delivering consistent, as-needed operational support at a savings to payroll overhead.
Risk Mitigation
Our infrastructure systematizes compliance, data security and business continuity with full redundancy and business resumption protocols.
Streamline Fundraising
Straight-through processing of new investments and API connections to web-based forms simplifies and reduces the costs of fundraising.
Raise More Capital
Our network of managing broker-dealers, private equity marketers and distribution specialists professionalize your distribution strategy.
Leverage the Power of
Take control of your fund operations
Rapidly growing funds often face inconsistent operating processes and a web of third-party suppliers and systems that don’t work well together. It makes operations complex, expensive and fragile and compromises your reputation with your investors. Streamlining fund, entity and portfolio company operations can seem overwhelming. That’s why we perform a strategic operational review to identify where and how we can implement standardized global processes across your fund and SPV operating platform.
Next Generation Fund Administration
Fund Administration Services for Alternative Investment Funds
Decades of specialized experience with alternative investment funds combined with industry-leading technology and white glove customer service. We provide administration for funds of every structure, AUM, asset class or investor count. Vistra achieves an unparalleled level of back-office efficiency.
End-to-End Integrated Services
Full-service fund administration clients achieve a top-tier investor experience, cost savings, data security and the freedom for fund management to focus on sales and investments.
- Fund Accounting, Financial Reporting & Audit Support
- Transfer Agent & Investor Services
- Tax Reporting & Document Production
- Bank Account & Cash Management
- Sales & Marketing Reporting
- Printing & Fulfillment
- Compliance Services
Fund Administration Technology
Integrated systems that centralize and streamline back-office functions for efficiency and data security with reporting capabilities to equip sales teams for greater success.
- STAR-XMS transfer agent system
- Account Connect investor & advisor web portal
- Dynamo PEView partnership accounting software
- Oracle Financials
- PaloAlto Networks, SECNAP, DarkTrace, ESET Endpoint, VPN data encryption
Decades of Industry Leadership
Vistra has driven efficiency, connectivity and data flow in the alternative investment industry for nearly 50 years.
- Fund administration software innovator
- Live data connections with participants and entities throughout the industry
- AIP Platform development partner
- Integrations with electronic subscription front ends
- Compatibility with CRM systems
- Sales reporting, financial reporting & compliance technology
Every Fund Type
Every Asset Class
Every Registration Type
- Private Equity
- Venture Capital
- Publicly-Registered Fund
- Asset-Backed Securitizations
- Fund of Funds
- Business Development Companies
- Fixed Income Funds
- Buyouts
- Real Estate Syndications
- DSTs / 1031 Programs
- Opportunity Zone Funds
- Tax Credit Funds
- Commodity Pools
- Equipment Leasing Funds
- Oil & Gas Programs
- S-11 REITs
- Reg D Funds – 506(b), 506(c)
- Reg A Funds – Tiers 1 and 2
- Private Placements
- Offshore Funds
- Crowdfunding
Unleash the value of your fund operations with
- Improve investor satisfaction
- Reduce errors and get more control across your entire fund operations
- Fuel your future growth
- Build infrastructure and processes that allow you to scale, and be ready to operate in every market
- Lower your costs
- Consolidate your global suppliers with Vistra, to save time and money.
Why Choose Vistra?
Our full-service fund administration solution combines over fifty years of experience with advanced proprietary technology, client-focused customer service and the unlimited global expansion potential of Vistra. Partnering with Phoenix American enables your fund to professionalize time-consuming back-office processes and streamline your back office so you can concentrate on sales and investments.
With fully outsourced fund accounting and investor relations, your fund will run smoothly, contain costs, reduce risk and avoid the employment issues of maintaining an in-house team. Discover how our expert solutions can help drive your business.
Recent Blogs
Frequently Asked Questions
What is fund administration?
Fund administration for dummies.
Fund Administration is the outsourced performance by a third party of back office functions for an investment fund. In terms of the investment portfolio, this means accounting, tracking and reporting for the investment portfolio as a whole, for the portfolio assets themselves and, in some cases, for the management company. In terms of the fund’s investors, it means managing the shareholder database and seeing to the investor-related processing of forms, management of cash and necessary communications with the investors in the fund, their financial advisors and various other intermediaries.
Full-service fund administration also includes the production of tax documents for investors, bank account management, regulatory compliance services, printing, fulfillment and interaction with auditors regulators and data aggregators on behalf of fund management. The goal of full-service fund administration is to free the fund management from the expense and difficulty of employing and managing in-house teams for these non-core functions so that management can concentrate on raising assets and making investments
What is fund administration vs fund accounting?
There is no established vocabulary for the third-party fund administration role in the investment fund industry. Managers of funds with only a few investors often consider it to mean simply a fund accountant. Managers of funds with hundreds or thousands of investors often engage a transfer agent (what they think of as a fund administration firm) to manage the needs of the investors, while separately engaging an accounting firm to manage the fund accounting. – Full-service fund administration firms perform all the back office functions on both the asset and investor sides and may offer additional services, reporting capability or data aggregation stemming from their role-based access to both portfolio asset and investor data.
Why is outsourced fund administration a good idea?
An effective division of labor makes any organization its most efficient. Investment fund management has expertise in raising investor capital and making lucrative investments. Portfolio accounting, shareholder management and financial communications are specialized functions subject to considerable investor demands and regulatory scrutiny. It makes business sense to utilize an outsourced provider with expert knowledge and specialized software to perform these functions.
Management benefits from the perspective, experience and knowledge of operational complexities only a fund administration firm can provide.
Outsourced back-office processes saves management on costs as pricing is based on services rendered as opposed to fixed payroll costs for an in-house team whose capacity is often not in line with the back office-demands of a fund at any given time.
Fund administration services scale with the growth of the fund, providing as-needed operational staff to ensure continuity. This represents the best use of investor funds in the service of the investors.
Regulatory compliance, data security and business continuity is systematized by a fund administration provider and removed as a source of business risk.
Fund management also benefits from the wide-ranging operational knowledge of an administration partner derived from their other clients, years of experience and industry relationships.
Institutional investors, in their due diligence process, often consider outsourced fund administration essential infrastructure for a fund in which they will invest. Pension funds, family offices and ultra-high-net-worth individuals recognize the importance of a professionalized division of labor.
Scalability is not an issue. Sales success can be a liability for a fund when hundreds or thousands of new investors become an unmanageable burden on an in-house back-office team.
Advanced specialized software applications utilized by a well-equipped fund administration providers are capable of managing at functionally limitless scale. The administrator’s staffing flexibility is able to respond to increases in client scale. The sales reporting capability of some fund administration software applications can provide valuable business intelligence for management, sales teams, auditors and others.
What is the history of fund administration?
Traditionally, alternative investment fund sponsors performed their own back-office processes, not always approaching it very seriously. Using Excel spreadsheets or CRM systems to manage portfolio accounting and investor management in-house, funds could grow only to a scale that could be supported operationally by a home-grown staff with limited administration experience.
Data consistency tended to be poor as each operator contributed errors and eccentricities to data entry, the systems used lacking controls to ensure data uniformity. Lack of activity tracking capability in these systems meant that mistakes often went undetected. This limited the utility of what reporting capability the system of record offered.
Funds tended to use multiple vendors and redundant processes to execute distribution payments, capital calls, proxy voting and tax document production. This caused complexity, confusion and unreliability to these processes. Mistakes and lateness of deliverables were difficult to avoid.
Multiple share classes, DRIP shares and complex commission structures were difficult or impossible to manage with in-house administration teams. Fund companies were limited in fund structure options available to them based on what could be managed by their in-house operations.
Accounting firms were often unfamiliar with the diverse nature of alternative investment funds. If outside accounting was ignorant of fund particulars (such as tax triggering events for funds of certain asset classes and structures) this resulted in audit and tax compliance issues.
In-house investor services, accounting and reporting were considered necessary distractions from management’s core mission of raising investor funds and generating returns. In-house fund administration was a difficult, redundant, inefficient, often counterproductive waste of resources, especially as successful fund performance attracted high numbers of investors.
What is the future of fund administration?
The alternative investment fund industry has experienced enormous growth in recent years. Increasingly, established fund sponsors of every size are recognizing the economic, regulatory, data security and reputational advantages of third-party fund administration that allows fund management to maintain only a core team of employees focused on investments and sales.
As opportunities abound, more and more emerging fund managers with less and less experience with the back-office side of investment funds are able to participate in the industry with the consultation and support of an experienced administration partner.
Investor expectations, financial advisor demands and regulatory requirements continue to increase the need for transparency, reporting capability and live data flow to and from multiple industry participants. Versatile fund-specific software systems and specialized expertise are increasingly required.
Innovators have responded to the needs of this dynamic industry. New sales technologies, data aggregators, payment systems and management applications have brought efficiencies – but the complexity of making multiple new technologies work together is only within the capabilities of the most advanced fund administration firms.
As more and more investors participate in alternative investments, scalability will be a prime concern for fund sponsors. From the formation of a new fund, sponsors need to consider the ability of the fund administration solution they put in place to manage sales success resulting in thousands of investments.
Advanced third-party back-office services are more necessary than ever. As alternative investments gain in popularity and back-office functions become more complex and highly regulated, outsourced fund administration is considered less optional and more essential than it has in the past.
What should I look out for in fund administration firms?
The biggest names in fund administration tend to suffer from their size with a bureaucratic and impersonal approach to client services. In many cases, despite their size, these firms deploy inferior legacy technologies relying on their industry reputation rather than innovation to grow their business.
In some cases, administration for private funds is not the core business of the firm. A company may be well established as a loan servicing firm, FinTech company or transfer agent for publicly-traded funds looking to leverage their client base by offering fund services for alternative funds despite a lacking expertise in their unique complexities.
Most fund administration firms lack systems capable of processing, reporting, and calculating at scale. System limitations result in capital calls, distributions and tax document preparation that are late, incomplete or incorrect. Throwing additional human resources at inferior systems to compensate does not resolve these issues.
High staff turnover is a problem at many administration firms. Lack of experience, unresponsiveness and lateness with deliverables is the result.
Consolidation in the fund administration space is a significant trend and means many firms are subject to acquisition. Once a firm is acquired, inevitable cost reductions and staffing cuts mean a decline in client service levels.
Very common among fund administration firms is uneven capabilities among the principal back-office functions: fund accounting, investor management, tax services, sales and activity tracking and reporting. Many firms do not offer across-the-board services. Others who do have a specialization in one or two services, offering inferior performance in the others.
Why does Phoenix American stand out among fund administration firms?
Decades of Fund Administration Experience
Advanced Proprietary Technology
Dedication to Customer Service
Phoenix American is a privately held company with deep expertise derived from over twenty years as a fund sponsor and over thirty years as a third-party fund administration provider.
We employ the most advanced and versatile systems in alternative investments including our proprietary STAR-XMS transfer agent software. Our processes streamline and simplify operations. Our systems provide reporting and visibility into sales, asset performance and compliance for investors, financial advisors, auditors and deal teams.
Phoenix American provides a full range of top-tier fund administration services encompassing all back-office processes. Experienced long-tenured staff are committed to responsive personalized client service. We specializing exclusively in administration for alternative investments with expertise across all fund structures, scales and asset classes.
An SEC registered transfer agent with SOC1, Type II audited processes, Phoenix American performs private equity fund administration and administration services for venture capital, real estate funds, fixed income funds, commodity pools, non-traded REITs, BDCs and more.
Customized solutions with the specific goals of each fund in mind are part of our partner-oriented consultative approach to client service.
Live system connectivity with clearing firms, broker-dealers, RIA’s, the DTCC AIP platform, FAN Mail, custodians and family offices provides maximum visibility for your offering industry-wide.
Our team of executives draw on employment experience with major fund sponsors, auditing firms, financial advisors, regulators and venture capital firms.
I already have people who perform fund administration functions. How can Phoenix American be more cost effective?
Fund accounting and fund administration has been our primary line of business for 50 years. We have the talent, the specialized software and the economies of scale to maximize efficiency and affordability. With Phoenix American’s menu of offerings you can choose the level of service that suits your needs. Whether you choose our full-service package or our application-only software solution, you can leverage Phoenix American’s skilled personnel and technological infrastructure to compliment your own capabilities more efficiently addressing your back-office processing needs. Either way, you save time and money while professionalizing your back-office processes.
How much will Phoenix American fund administration cost?
Your contract will be tailored to the individual needs of your business. There will be a one-time implementation fee and a monthly fee thereafter. You will find the value and ease of working with Phoenix American far superior to the expense and difficulty of purchasing the equipment and maintaining the staff necessary to perform administration functions in-house.
How is my account handled by Phoenix American?
An account manager is assigned to lead your fund administration team and be a day-to-day point of contact for you: responding to questions, investigating concerns, overseeing account activity and coordinating any adjustments that might be needed. A knowledgeable backup account manager, part of your day-to-day team, will ensure that responsive service is always available.
How is my data more secure using a third-party fund administration provider?
Data security is maximized when transmission of data is minimized and necessary transmission is genuinely secured. With a full-service fund administration provider, asset, investor and transaction information is maintained within a single facility and processed internally to perform necessary functions. Sponsor access to information is limited to VPN-enabled system access. Transmission of information to investors and financial advisors is limited to a password-protected, system-integrated web portal. Checks and statements are produced and delivered from a secure department within the facility of the administration firm, employing direct system access, with bar-code tracking and adhering to SOC 1 audited processes.
Our comprehensive suite of tailored fund administration offerings
Learn More About Fund Administration
Find More Information Here
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- Save Money with Fund Administration Services
- Fund Management and Fund Administration
- How a Fund Administration Provider Works for You
- Fund Administration For Startup Crowdfunding
- Fund Administration As A Profit Center
- Buyers’ Guide to Fund Administration
- Leveraging Fund Administration for Reporting and Compliance
- Case Study in Fund Administration – Private Investors in a Public Fund
- How To Choose a Fund Administration Firm
- Fund Administration Buyers’ Guide
- Fund Administration for Debt Funds
- Fund Administration and ADISA
- Fund Administration for the Emerging Fund Manager
- Fund Administration and the Institute for Portfolio Alternatives
- Fund Administration – A Valuable Ally For The Emerging Manager
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- A Reputation for Fund Administration
Let’s Talk
Let’s have a conversation about your goals.