Steps toward standardization for sharper diligence and reporting
Policymakers’ idea that LPs are flying blind, taking unnecessary risks that are threatening systemic risk, is not 100% true. Investors need transparency in three distinct moments: when they allocate to a manager, when positions move from healthy to pre-distress, and when they must decide whether to redeem, roll, or re-up. LPs are evaluating managers through the lens of liquidity and realized performance during diligence. Distributions to Paid-in Capital (DPI) is now considered “critical” or “most critical” performance metric by 54% of LPs, tied with Multiple on Invested Capital (MOIC) as the second-most-important performance metric.[iii] However, regardless of best intentions, diligence and performance measurement processes have been challenging, with murky definitions across fields and a lack of standardization in the treatment of different line items.
Close the transparency gap with consolidated fund data platforms
A golden source of investment data allows private market firms to calculate performance faster since they don’t have to toggle between multiple systems or create multiple reports. It’s called “golden” for a reason. An advanced data infrastructure layer, fluent in the language of markets and finance, automates the centralization and standardization of financial information, from ingestion and normalization to data quality and governance workflows. This is the gilded fuselage that makes clear portfolio visibility, comparing like-to-like, and look-through possible. At the entry point, data connectors direct the flow of new structured or unstructured data flows from data pipelines into models. At midpoint, data infrastructure automatically normalizes multiple views of the same models and map existing data structures to a unified framework. Subsequently, downstream, treasury, risk management, and reconciliation teams can gather exactly the data needed for their regular, custom, or ad-hoc reporting needs.
Unified portfolio view for sounder risk management
This is a particularly valuable solution for private market managers that need to integrate data from so many diverse structures like private equity, ABF, NAV lending, infrastructure, secondaries, and structured credit hybrids. LPs want to make decisions based on near real-time data on portfolio metrics and true exposure across borrower types, industries, geographies, collateral categories, or underlying asset pools. Siloed systems and inadequate data flows hide these correlations in the fog of fragmentation. Legacy systems in private credit simply cannot support today’s diverse datasets, creating reporting failures and bottlenecks that limit scale, transparency, and investor confidence. The lack of a unified portfolio view across disparate systems exposes the firm to unnecessary risks.
How ILPA reporting standards are raising the bar
The Institutional Limited Partners Association’s (ILPA) new frameworks are expressly designed to help shape the new modern LP experience.[iv] The new ILPA guidelines, some of which went into effect on January 1, 2026, include new reporting and performance templates with clearer definitions across fields and enhanced guidance on the standardized treatment of different line items. The new performance templates include standardized reporting for performance metrics, including IRRs and TVPI/MOIC, with designated breakouts for reporting the relevant gross and net figures with and without the impact of fund-level subscription facilities; as well as tables to capture cash flows and fund- and portfolio-level transaction type mapping for transparency into the calculation methodology for performance metrics. Mapping new data fields often exposes inconsistencies between systems and accounting standards, creating additional reconciliation work.[v]
Many LPs welcome the new reporting template which addresses their concerns about expenses being passed on to them. GPs that have already deployed unified, automated data infrastructure will have mitigated the inconsistencies across fragmented systems and disparate datasets.
Data infrastructure is the foundation of modern LP reporting
The private markets industry is striving to find solutions to private credit’s opacity in cash flows between GPs and LPs like family offices and pension funds and lack of standard categorization in reporting and accounting. Everybody is focused on the speed, accuracy, and fee calculations of private markets reporting. The goal is to move away from weekly or monthly manual reporting toward weekly or semi-monthly cleansed cycles that provide LPs with better visibility into their liabilities, capital calls, and deal parameters.
GPs’ transformation of the modern private markets LP experience begins and ends with data consolidation: bringing together deal flow, portfolio operations, financial performance, and fund accounting into a unified foundation that serves both internal decision-making and external LP reporting. As fundraising competition intensifies, LPs increasingly favor managers that provide faster reporting, greater transparency, and deeper insights into portfolio performance. GPs that modernize data-driven investor reporting, responsiveness, and communication can strengthen trust and stand out during due diligence.
