IQ-EQ Masterclass for First Time Fund Managers – Episode 1

Hello, and welcome to the IQ-EQ Masterclass. For first-time fund managers, today's series is brought to you by IQ-EQ, a global investor service group. Here at IQ-EQ, we're located across 24 worldwide locations. And our focus is very much on delivering our global expertise combined with our unwavering focus on client service delivery. My name is Carmel, and I will be your host on today's session and all the way throughout the Masterclass series. In a few moments, I will explain to you the content that we will be discussing in this series, which will be made up of five short – which I hope will be both informative and enjoyable – sessions. So here we have our agenda. Today, we will kick off the Masterclass series with leading a discussion around: What are the challenges facing first-time fund managers? What do we see from our experience here in IQ-EQ? And we will look specifically to the discussion points around outsourcing and technology as part of today's session. In session two through to session four, we will invite you back, and during this time we will look to lead the discussion around specifically on the topic of best practice for fund administration. So, this is where we'll go into a little bit more detail on what best practice looks like at the fundraising stage, the investment stage, and finally, at the realization stage of the fund life cycle. In session five, we will conclude the series by looking to the topic of fund domiciles. As a gentle reminder, at this point, we would ask you that if you do have any questions or queries, please do reach out to us here in IQ-EQ, and we will be happy to support or connect you with the relevant people to be able to help you. As I've mentioned already, session one is focused on looking at the challenges facing first-time fund managers. So here in IQ-EQ, we have supported many first-time fund managers and businesses launched to the market. And with our experience, we have seen those parties count many challenges, which we would like to share with you today. So, what can those challenges look like? During the setup process there can be many unknowns. It can be a daunting process and what those unknowns can look like is: complexity, cost, and time. So, with these three main challenges at this point of our discussion today, we just want to raise your awareness around the fact that the complexity, the cost, and the time can be much more than initially anticipated. But with that awareness in the back of our minds, at this point of the discussion, let's move on to again share the IQ-EQ experience on what we would see as being the four success factors to help you with these challenges and to help you with your successful first-time fund. So, the success factors take the shape of the form of the team, the strategy, the fundraising process, and the fund structure. So, I'm sure there's no surprises on this slide, but what we would like to do is to touch on some of the key points to give you some thoughts to take away around what you need to have in place at this stage of your fundraising or planning for your first-time fund. So, let's look at the team as a success factor to kick off this point of the discussion. So, when it comes to your team, again, a lot of these points may seem very simplistic, but they're also very important. The team itself is critical to launching your first-time fund. If you can imagine, you will be working with this team for up to 10, maybe up to 15 years. So, the question is when it comes to your team, can you work together? Can you spend those long hours in the airport together as you travel around to view your investment portfolio, and so on? The question is about your track record as a team, have you worked together previously, and do you have a proven track record? Cause this is something that will be of importance to your limited partners who are going to invest in your first-time fund. What else will be important from your team is role clarity. Who is going to do what as part of the wider team involved in this fund? So, some of the roles, will, for example, be the Chief Financial Officer. It's good practice to think about number one - Will you have a CFO? Can you afford to have one? The second role will be the principal, is there to be one? And some other roles to think about at this stage is marketing, who will lead that from the team and likewise who will take the legal work stream forward as part of the fund also. A few more points just to mention on team is outsourcing. And we will come to this in more detail later in today's presentation. But what you do need to be thinking about as you plan your team is - What will you do in house? Will you provide the full suite of services in house, or will you look to outsource? And if so, who will you outsource to? And we'll go into more detail on outsourcing a little bit later, but at this stage, it's just looking at that question, considering it - Will you, or will you not, outsource to third parties? To complete the team considerations, let's then bring our viewpoint back to the investors. How will you communicate with them? Later in the presentation, we'll touch on technology again. And one of the trends that we continue to see in the market is the ever-growing demand from investors, for technology. And there will, there will be an expectation from your LPs to be communicated with using technology. And we will talk about what some of those solutions could look like later in today's discussion. Finally, do you have sufficient finances for the long fund-raise period? So, you will have a minimum commitment in mind to launch your fund and to be aware, as we've mentioned, this process can be more complex, it can take more time and it can take much more money, than you ever anticipated. And that can apply to the fund raise period as well. It could take one, two, maybe up to three years to get your fund launched to the market. And the question that we're asking you to think about and reflect on here is - Do you have the sufficient finances to see you through to that successful point of your first close? Finally, what is your personal commitment contribution levels? What's your finances to get you to that first close, but also as part of the team, will you be able to contribute to the fund as an investor, as maybe required from your LPs? And we'll talk much more about that in a few moments of time, as we move on to our second success factor. So, I'm going to stop for a few moments, just let you digest what we spoke about in the team. And again, after this presentation, we can share with you a little checklist to highlight these points for you to consider at this stage. Okay, let us move on then to our second success factor for launching our first-time fund, which is of course our strategy. So, when you come to the market with your first time fund, your potential LPs will want to hear all about your investment strategy and as they do so, it should be clear and easy for them to understand. As they read about your strategy, the next question that will be in your investor's mind is about your track record. Now, how successful have you been with this strategy previously? And that will stand to be a big attraction to your LPs if you can evidence your proven track record of yourself and of your wider team. Also, it's about thinking about the investors themselves - Is this strategy something that they desire to have in their portfolio? Is this an asset class that they wish to allocate their assets into as part of their, for example, their diversification approach? To conclude on strategy then, co-investment rights, have you thought about this? Will they be offered to the LPs because they will want to, they'll be interested to, hear about those co-investment rights, whenever you go out to talk to them about your strategy. On that point on co-invest, if there's any fees to be received, where do they get received into, and you should also address that as part of your strategy as well. Last up then, is reporting to the investors on your strategy - How will you report? You touched on this point already using technology. And then what that reporting will actually look like, whenever you send it out to the investors as well. In terms of strategy, as you will be aware, quite often, your LPs will ask for you to also to contribute to the partnership as well. So, the last point I leave with you in strategy is to consider, number one - Will the management team make a significant personal contribution? If so, can you afford it? And, if not, how will you finance it? Will it be a necessary evil to leave in a third party to support you with that financing, in your geo capacity as an investor in the fund, as required. So again, this little checklist we will share with you and just some thoughts around strategy, which is required once again for that successful launch of your first-time fund. Just two more to go, before we get onto the topic of outsourcing. Next up then, for success, it leads us nicely into fund structuring. So far, we've talked about the team. Is it going to have the expertise to bring that strategy to life and to deliver it to the investors over the next 10 to 12 years? With that in mind, whenever you go to market, you do have to have your fund structure in place as well. So as part of this, you'll be discussing with your lawyers, your tax advisors, and your own in-house experts. And the question that you will answer around that table with that group of experts is - What kind of structure will your fund take? How will you face the world? Will you face the world as a partnership, a corporate? And once you have made that decision, you'll also then reflect on, will you be a listed fund or an unlisted. To complete that structuring decision process, it will also lead you then into the questions around fund domicile. Are you going to domicile here in the UK? Will you go to the US, to Delaware, for example? Will you go offshore to Guernsey, Jersey, Mauritius, Cayman? Or maybe you'll come into Europe - Luxembourg, Netherlands, and so on. Can't forget Asia as well. So, there will be reasons which will drive your decision on where to domicile. Some of them will be about meeting your own needs as the GP. They’ll be looking at your investors and what their requirements are. And importantly, the third element in that discussion will be looking at your investment portfolio as well. So, once you've had that all in mind, you will come up not just with your structure, but where you will domicile your fund. And the final consideration for you will be - How big will your fund be? What is your target commitment level? Is it 500 million, 900 million, and so on? Once you have decided that, that will then take us to our final success factor and leads us nicely into our final point at this point of our discussion, which is around the fundraising process itself. So, as you set out into the market, at this point, you have your team, you have your strategy, your structure proposal, and now you're going out to the market, to the fundraising stage. A few moments ago, in our hypothetical training example, your target commitment was 500 million and you now need to complete the fundraising for this. So, the question around fundraising, and again, we'll come to this later, at the end of today's session, when we talk more about technology, the question is - do you need an electronic data room? This is something that's become the norm in the market. It's something that the limited partners have come to expect. So, it's something for you to give due consideration to, as you get (enter) into the fundraising stage of your fund life cycle. So, what electronic data rooms can do, it provides you a secure, cyber-security compliant, platform to communicate with your investors, going out to your investors, maybe with your PPM - your private placement memorandum - and other additional information that you want to cascade to your investors at this fundraising stage of the life cycle. So that's where I'm going to stop, just to recap on where we've got to so far in today's discussion. So, what I want to leave you with is those little checklists that we have touched on just now in terms of the team, the strategy, the structure, and the fundraising process for your fund. And as I said, from the IQ-EQ viewpoint, this is what we would very much pitch as being the key success factors at this stage. Now, if I may, I would now like to lead into the second part of today's discussion, which is going to lead us into considering the questions around outsourcing and what the technology should be for your first-time fund. Okay. So, far we've touched on the challenges, as I said, we're now going to drive a little bit more into the detail but considering the question about outsourcing. So, when we think about the challenges facing first-time managers, one of the considerations outside of the four success factors we have just mentioned, is the question of outsourcing and technology. And how I would like to put, convey it, in this session today is to do it or not to do it. And what I mean by that is at this point of your first-time fund, you can decide to provide all of your suite of services in house, or alternatively, you can look to outsource services to an investor solutions group, such as IQ-EQ. Now, when it comes to outsourcing, if we look at the trends in the market, just for a few moments, just to give a little bit of background before we go into the detail of what fund administration is, the trend in the private equity industry itself is very much on the cusp of what we would say an outsourcing explosion. And the reason why that is, is because the GPS are very much showing a desire to get back to their core competencies of raising and investing funds. That's the core of what your business is. And with that mindset, the option that's on the table to enable them to focus on that core part of their business of fundraising and investment and exiting out of investments in due course is to outsource, as I said, to a firm like IQ-EQ, the investor solutions group. Another thing I would like to add to this thought process as well is just a quick reflection on where the wider market is today. So, we spoke about that trend which we're seeing towards outsourcing, but if we even take a step back and to help us answer that question to do, or not to do outsourcing, if we look where the market is today here in May of 2022, we've just come through unprecedented times following the global pandemic, the industry itself has been through unprecedented change. But the good news story here is that the market and the industry itself has come out stronger than ever. And that's evidence, in the AUM for this alternative asset class is now setting at 13.32 trillion in 2021. So we sit back and digest that for a few moments. The key message here is that the market is in a very good place. If we take that a step forward then and say, okay, looking into the future, what does that mean? Looking into the future it means that the investors, whenever the surveys have been done, for example, by Ernst & Young (EY) and Deloitte earlier this year, what we're hearing from the LPs is that they do intend to continue investing in the private equity funds. So, the growth is there for you, the first-time fund managers. And if I can come back to my initial point about the trend towards outsourcing, the reason why we're seeing that trend is because there is the growth and the continuing growth in the market. You, the GPs, want to get back to your core competencies of raising and investing funds, as part of your key role and contribution to the industry. So, with that background then, let's look at what outsourcing would mean for you if you were to go down this route. So, if we look at the fund life cycle, and if we take a few moments to discuss what outsourcing could look like if you were to come to a company such as IQ-EQ as the global investors group. Outsourcing, well essentially for me is about partnering with a third party. And that partner will bring to the table for you, their people, their expertise, as I said, for a company like us, it's expertise from our 24 locations. But what else will come to the table from outsourcing is technology. And technology is an ever-growing space, it’s an ever-evolving space. And I'll talk to you about what some of those technology solutions would look like, when you partner with a third-party fund administrator. But before I do that, let me come back to the life cycle itself. So, at stage one, we're all about raising capital and fund establishment. Whenever you partner with a fund administrator, the outsourcing services that you can expect to receive at this phase are quite extensive. And in session two, we will look at this in much more detail, but for now, if I can touch on the outsourcing services, just at a high level, the first thing, whenever you partner with a fund administrator using their expertise and their technology and their people and so on, they can help you at the fundraising stage. Okay? So, they can help you with a document repository. So, they can provide you with that technology solution, which will allow you to communicate with those potential LPs at that fundraising stage. And as I said, that's a trend that the LPs have come to expect, to have that technology at the fundraising stage. Whenever you're onboarding your investors, when you outsource to a company like IQ-EQ or a fund administrator, we can support you with the AML and KYC requirements. So, we know that this is a very much a legislated area. And again, if you want to take that away out of your day-to-day role, you could outsource that to a company such as a fund administrator. Okay? Next up then when you launch your fund, there will be investor reporting. Okay? One of those investor reporting will be the production of your financial statements, normally on a quarterly basis. So again, you can outsource the calculation of the net asset value of the fund to the third-party fund administrator. Within that administrator, they will have the expertise around the accounting GAAPs. So, if it's a US GAAP, UK GAAP, and so on, they will have that knowledge to capture that in your financial statements, as it needs to be. There will be additional LP reporting, such as capital statements, for example, drawdown notices, distribution notices in due course, as we progress around the life cycle. Again, as you outsource, these tasks will be calculated, accounted for by that partner. And from a technology perspective, the provider will also be providing the technology solutions so that when you communicate with your LPs and the reporting, that you're doing so in that cyber secure compliant manner, which is again an important focus for the LPs. Okay? In session two, something that I would like to talk more to about as well is about the AIFM and the regulatory hosting. So as an Alternative Investment Fund Manager, there will be the requirement to get regulated. That's something, again, when you partner with a fund administrator, they will have a specialised segment of their business that can support you with that. So, for example, if you're getting regulated with the FCA that can maybe take up to 12 months to complete that. But when you partner with, for example, the regulatory and compliance team, they will be able to support you during that application process. The list goes on so let me just touch on a few more points, and as I said, I will keep the detailed content for session two when we meet again. What else you will get from the fund administrator when outsourcing is also about depositary services. So, this leads us into regulations. The regulatory environment for this industry continues to evolve, with new regulations coming out. The most topical one at the moment being ESG, the environmental, social, and governance regulations. If I come back to AIFMD, the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive, and one of the requirements there is to have depositary services if marketing your fund into an EU investor base. Outsourcing and partnering with the fund administrator, they will be able to support you. They will be able to provide you with those depositary services. So, for example, here in IQ-EQ, we have depositary services in the UK, Luxembourg, France, and Ireland. So again, with a holistic approach, we can also support you in that side of your requirements as well. Okay? What else I'd like to mention here then is about compliance. So, compliance is a huge requirement, for example, if you're regulated by the FCA, they will have their 11 principles that you will need to comply with. From a technology perspective, again, we have a platform that would support you with all those compliance requirements, called Max Comply. And again, that's something that you can expect your administrator to bring to the table to help you with all those compliance needs. So that's just at the fundraising stage, believe it or not, when you're raising the capital and getting to that first close. And we'll go into that, as I say, in more detail in session two. If I then move through stage two, where we're looking to deploy capital, services here with a fund administrator, when you partner with them, would take the form of company secretarial services. Whenever you're calling your commitments from your investors at, through a draw down or capital call, we can support that process end-to-end for you on behalf of the fund. Like guys with distributions, we can take that process based from your instruction, and we can take it through, to have the money paid out of the bank account in the form of a distribution as instructed by yourself. If in your fund structure, which we had spoke about earlier, you have SPVs special purpose vehicles. Once again, we can provide, or any fund administrator can provide a suite of services around those SPVs, to support you at that level of your fund structure also. Compliance support, we've mentioned that already, and again, that will continue not just at the fundraising stage, but all the way throughout the life cycle of the fund. So that will be an ongoing partnership for compliance support. Directorship services, again, that's something that we can help you with as you deploy your capital and invest into your investments. Moving on then to stage three, where you're at here, you're monitoring your investments, you're doing your reporting again, where the fund administrator would come in to partner with you, freeing up your time. As we said earlier, to focus on the core part of your business. Distributions, if you're distributing capital gains and dividend income interest income, we can take that away. We can calculate it, allocate it to investors and make sure that that money is distributed as you instruct it into the bank accounts of your investors in a timely manner as part of the LPA. Card interest, again, we can help you build the models as a fund administrator. We will calculate that card interest and make the necessary payments to the different parts of your structure as required finally. Tax filings, another support, service, and compliance liquidations, we will support you in this area. Also finally, if I haven't convinced you already about outsourcing and the benefits that you stand to get from this, if we look to stage four, the realization fee is of your fund, the wind-up stage. Again, we will, as we have been all the way throughout the life of the fund, we will be doing the counting and the investor reporting. AFMD , the annex, six reporting again, we can help you with that. Valuation reviews, transfer agency services, portfolio monitoring services, risk management, and also access to your data and your analytics as well. So, lots of points that I've just read off screen there, but the one that I would like to pull out and this area is again, another point around technology. So, whenever you speak to your LPs, we're always looking for better ways, and better experiences for both you, the GP and your investors. So, giving access to data and analytics and portfolio monitoring services is something which is, you know, very much demanded from the market. So, what you could expect from a fund administrator like IQ-EQ is a technology solution, which is known as Cosmos for IQ-EQ in the market. And that will be a portfolio monitoring tool, which will be available to yourself as the GP, but also it, it will be available to the LPs, to get a visualization of their data and their analytics as well. And all of that is about increasing the experience, providing that, real time information, to the stakeholders in the private equity fund as well. So again, I'm just going stop and reflect on what we have just discussed and to take a step back at the start of today's discussion. We were talking about the challenges of raising a first-time fund, and we talked about the challenges of time, complexity and cost, where we went from there is we had highlighted then, okay, what do does IQ-EQ see as the four success factors? So, we talked about the importance of your team, your fund strategy, your structure, and also of your fundraising process itself. So, at that point of the process, if I can use an analogy at this stage, you have the framework for your fund, and you're setting it up for success at this point of the process. So, it's almost like building a car. You have that framework in place where have now tried to take this discussion is to think about, okay, how do I take this fund forward for the next 10 to 12 years and set it up for continued ongoing success. And again, coming back to our analogy of a car, know, how do we drive this car? How do we take it forward and how do we equip it to do what it needs to do? And that brought us to the question around outsourcing to do it or not to do it. And to help you lead into this conversation we had talked about where is the market at today? Where is the market going in the future? And as a result of that growth and the trend in the market for GPs wanting to focus on their core business of fundraising and investment that led us into, okay, what would outsourcing look like? And I've just tried to touch on the four broad areas of the different stages of the life cycle. And to give you a little flavor of what outsourcing, would look like with a partnering fund administration firm. So, we're almost at the end of today's discussion, just a few more points to mention. Whenever you do go out to the market to consider, looking at partnering with a fund administrator, and now please remember that your LPs will be interested in if you're outsourcing. And if so, to him, what I'd like to, just bring into the conversation at this stage fund administration can be a crowded market. So, whenever you do go out to look at partners, it is important to also think, not just about the core fund administration services, which we had touched on here, but for us, it's also about the value-add services that that partner can bring to you. And I remember that partner is going to bring you global expertise, the people, and they should also be bringing technology to the table as well. So, if I may, let me just show you what the additional services that a fund administrator such as IQ-EQ as a global provider would also bring it to the table for you the first-time fund manager. So, some of the additional add on value services that we would bring would be valuation services for your investment portfolio, AIFMD services. So, the depository services, and we'll talk much more of that in session two. If I may, the ESG services around regulations have already mentioned the point. Regulations is very much an evolving and growing space, for the private equity industry, ESG being a great example of that a very key focus for the funds at the moment is the GP and also for their investors. And this trend is expected to grow into the future. So, whenever you partner with a fund administrator and you have regulations such as ESG, the value add that you could expect to get with the correct partner obviously is help in drawing up your ESG procedure, training, helping you with your reporting on ESG. How do we get that reporting to investors and so on? So again, it's not just about the core services that we've mentioned. It's all about these add on services as well. Just to touch on one or two more just before I leave this slide. So financial statement prep will come to that one first that will be a core part of the service. The expertise will be in that business to ensure your financial statements are prepared. For example, in line with UK gap, Lux gap, depending on where your fund is based. If I can come to outsourcing on the chief financial officer support, this is a trend that we're seeing at the moment here in IQ-EQ with the clients that we partner with. We find that clients are speaking to us, asking for support roles around the CFO. This could well be because of a trend in the market around challenges around talent management, you know, hiring staff, retaining staff, and so on. So as a result of those challenges with the right fund administrator, the message that I'd like to convey here is that you can partner with your administrator to tap into some additional support services that your CFO may need, back in the GP house. Okay. So that's just some to mention, I will come back to some more of these as we go throughout the rest of the masterclass series. One which I look forward to bringing and talking more about in session two is, Max Comply, which would be the compliance services that you can tap into with the fund administrator, but also, investor solutions spoke about this a few moments ago. This is about data visualization. It's about making the experience much more, beneficial for both the GP and the LP, using technology at platforms. So again, we'll come back to that in due course. So that's outsourcing. And I suppose if I was to ask you the question now to do or not to do, hopefully I've given you some, food for thought, and maybe you'll have some questions for us on this particular topic. Again, I have touched on some of these already, but when it comes to outsourcing the trend in the market, as we've mentioned, is moving towards outsourcing services to a partner, such as IQ-EQ to allow the GP to focus on their core business. Now, some of the drivers for this can be linked back to concerns that we see in the market today for GPS talent management. I touched on this already around the IQ-EQ sort of outsource support that we can provide to the CFOs. It's difficult to get staff in the market that does bring challenges, and you can with the right partner and your fund administrator leverage off their, expertise and people and technology, to help you with that. Regulations such as ESG with the fund administrator, they will have a specialized team that can keep you up to speed on these regulations. They can help you draft your procedures as is required, and they can help you report to your investors as they will be demanding and needing from you as well. Back-office processes and technology, again from Ernst & Young (EY) this is among one of the top five priorities, for GPS. Okay. So again, we can take those back-office processes, support you with them and provide you with the technology, to do that in the most efficient way possible. Investor reporting, an ever-growing area. And again, nearly four out of five GPS globally expect investor to demand more performance reporting transparency over the next year. So again, when you partner with a fund administrator, there should be the expertise to guide you around this. And also, you will need technology as part of your solution here as well, which you would be able to leverage off when partnering with the right fund administrator also. Finally cost management, we mentioned this as one of our challenges in our first few slides, and we come back to that point just here, it's always a top priority for GPS and amongst the largest firms. 63%, in the Ernst & Young survey have reminded us that technology deployments are what is key for them to be able to reduce costs. Okay. So that's going lead me into my final part of the presentation today, which is about technology, just to start painting the picture as to what technology can look like whenever you partner with a third-party administrator. So again, before I do that and get to technology, just wanted to share with you some of these statistics, from the Ernst & Young Survey, as I said, the trend in the market with the particular fund sizes. If you look at the second point here, you will see that there is an expected trend to continue outsourcing their services, to fund administrators. As we talked around that fund life cycle and to present that in a more concise way, when it comes to outsourcing, you can look to outsourcing regulatory reporting. So, ESG reporting, FATCA, AIFMD reporting that can be outsourced to your fund administrator, that you partner with. Investor solutions maybe the portfolio monitoring tool. Fund accounting, again, we can take off the accounting, the preparation of the financial statements. Tax, again, we can support you there. Portfolio analysis, and finally with the valuations, also, again, the statistics show that there is a trend towards increased levels of outsourcing in these different areas. Finally, just want to mention one last point on outsourcing if I may. When it comes to the cost of outsourcing fund administration, how do you pass that cost of outsourcing through? Can you pass these costs through the fund or do you have to bear them yourself? So, this is just some statistics and some percentages, which show you, again, we've taken this from Ernst & Young, which show you, which of the services do tend to be passed in terms of the outsourcing costs through to the funds and then ultimately, to the LPs. So, I just thought that was interesting. It is something for you to think about, but who bears the cost if you do these services in-house versus if you're to outsource them to a fund administrator. And our last slide, we want to just touch briefly on technology today. We have touched on it sort of indirectly as we go throughout the presentation, and I will go continue to come back to it as we go throughout at the rest of the master class series. So, whenever it comes to technology, there is a desire for change. That change is coming from yourself as a GP. It's coming from the regulatory reporting requirements, for example, but it's also been driven from the limited partners as well. So, there is a desire change to get enhanced reporting. And the question is, is how can we use technology to deliver that and also to make some of those cost savings that we want to achieve as well. So, to answer this question, I just want to share with you some of the technology that we have here and IQ-EQ as a global investor solutions script technology is certainly an area that continues to grow and evolve on an ongoing basis. So, whenever you look to partner with the fund administrator technology, that could come in at stage one of your fund lifecycle, be the fundraising stage could be for example, what we would call our data exchange portal, which is the technology that we use to communicate with investors. The trend in the market is for LPs to expect technology to be used from the very first interaction point at the fundraising stage. So, the technology that we would offer our clients that we partner with is a data exchange portal, which provides a cyber secure compliance solution, which again is a key focus for you as a GP and also from the LPs perspective as well. So, there's technology at that very first point of interaction with your investors. Now, when it comes to the accounting of your fund, if you outsource that you will be able to leverage off the kind of platforms that your fund administrator uses here in IQ-EQ, we use FIS Investran as our solution for our accounting. And then that then leads us into the ability to do investor level reporting to each of the LPs as well, because of that excellent accounting platform that we use here. Taking it forward, then how we communicate to investors with the draw downs, the distributions notices partner statements, and so on. We need to distribute that information. We want to do it using cyber secure technology, and that would bring us back to your data exchange portal here in an IQ-EQ that we would provide you with for on a solution on that front. Again at the fundraising stage, technology will come in on your compliance side. So, we have a product which we market called might comply, which is put in place to help you with the technology side of all of your compliance requirements and so on. Moving through the fund as well, coming back to the strategy that you have, if your strategy is a private debt fund, if your strategy is a real estate fund, you also need to think about the kind platforms that you're using for these particular asset classes as well for our clients that we partner with. We will be using market leading technology to complement Investran. We will also be using all view for our private debt funds, and we'll be using NY for our real estate funds. So again, there's a technology requirement that's coming there, specifically from the fund strategy or the fund types that you're offering to your investors. The last technology that I'll finish up on as I'm conscious of time, it is investor reporting, portfolio management. And the product that we offer here is Cosmos, which gives that interactive database or dashboard, which gives visualization to the GPS and LPs. It increases their experience and gives them access to the core content that they need to know about their private equity fund itself. And that's where I'm going to stop talking. I know we don't want to make these sessions longer than 30 minutes, but I just want to do a very quick recap. And then we will conclude today's session and reconvene for session two very soon in the future. So as a recap, what our objectives today was to look at what are the challenges facing yourself as a first-time manager, we talked about what we've seen as the four success factors to build the framework of your fund, to set it up for success. And we compared that to the analogy of building the framework of a car, using your strategy, your structure, your fundraising and all important, your team as well, where this conversation then went into, look at the considerations around outsourcing and technology. And as I said, today is quite high level. We will drill down in this in more detail as we go throughout the Masterclass series. What we were trying to do at this second part of our discussion today was to start considering, you know, if you wish to outsource, or if you wish to do these services in house. The message that I would leave you with when it comes to outsourcing is to partner with a global firm that can support you in what we would call a holistic approach. So, whenever you do partner with this fund administrator, they can provide you the advice, the expertise, and the technology that you need to add those wheels to your car, to get the driving license, to take your car forward, to take your fund forward and set it up for success over the next 10 to 12 years. So, let me leave it there at, for now as a reminder. If you do have any questions on today's topic, you want to receive any further information, please reach out to us here at the IQ-EQ team. Thank you. And I look forward to seeing you at session two, where we'll be looking at the best practice for stage one of our life, which is our fundraising stage.