The below template - Request for Proposal for provision of Fund Administration Services (the Template Administrator RfP) - has been prepared by the BVCA in conjunction with the Legal & Technical Committee and a number of fund administrators active in the UK private equity industry.
The Template Administrator RfP is tailored for the private equity industry and has been constructed to provide managers or prospective managers in the asset class with a list of questions that managers may consider asking when undertaking an administrator selection exercise. It is also anticipated that the Template Administrator RfP will be of benefit to private equity administrators by providing them with a comprehensive set of relevant questions that might be asked during a selection process.
The Template Administrator RfP is not intended to be a standardised questionnaire and will need to be tailored by managers to fit their individual requirements. Not all managers will need their administrators to perform all the functions included in the template, and not all questions will be relevant for every manager. The following is a non-exhaustive list of factors that managers may wish to consider when preparing the scope of their own administrator RfP:
The specific services required from the administrator (and whether the manager expects to perform any administrative functions itself in-house);
whether tax or regulatory reporting or other services are required;
whether a multi-jurisdictional presence is required from the administrator;
complexity of manager structure and investment structures; and
whether the manager has existing administration systems and processes already in place (or if, for example, it is a first time manager).
Please note that the template does not cover questions regarding the steps to be taken once an administrator has been appointed, such as service implementation, information and data transfer and other practical matters.