BENCHMARK SURVEY: Private Funds Survey
Since 2007, Barrington has benchmarked mutual fund accounting and administration costs. In 2012, we added a separate survey to measure mutual fund audit fees. Three years later we started benchmarking mutual fund tax costs. Separately and together, these three surveys have provided mutual fund companies with detailed insights into their costs.
This year Barrington developed a comprehensive Private Funds Survey to benchmark participants’ Administration, Audit, and Tax costs. The scope of this work includes:
- Hedge Funds
- Private Equity Funds
- Hybrid Funds (HF holdings with PE structure)
- Illiquid or Real Asset Funds
- Alternative fund of funds
- ERISA only funds
Private fund managers and boards can obtain an accurate comparison of fees paid and predicted costs.
The goal of this survey is to answer the central question, “Are overall costs within a reasonable range of what others funds/advisors are paying, based on a relative complexity factor?”
To answer that question, we developed a unique predictive model to examine and understand costs and cost drivers for dissimilar private funds and fund complexes. Our model, which uses approximately 9,000 data points that we have accumulated since the survey’s introduction, is exceptionally correlated with predicted costs. The survey is service provider agnostic. Participants are provided with predicted and actual costs at the fund level.
… and compare the reasonableness of their firm’s audit fees with that of their peers.
- Firms can assess the appropriateness of both their overall and individual fund fees.
- Management can better understand the underlying cost drivers for those fees.
- Private funds can use the data from this survey to confirm or adjust the level of service provider fees they negotiate.