Industry Updates

NorthPoint shares some lessons learned from Form PF filings

Thursday, March 07, 2013

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Opalesque Industry Update – NorthPoint, a provider of software solutions and services for hedge funds, asset managers, and industry service providers, announced today the successful completion of the February round of Form PF submissions for a broad range of hedge funds and asset management clients.

“Form PF is an exercise for which it definitely pays to ‘measure twice and cut once.’ Since the original Form PF mandate, we have worked closely with our clients to help them navigate through this operationally challenging process – right from data collection to electronic submissions,” said Joseph Amarante, NorthPoint Managing Partner. “Based on the success that we have had with recent filings, coupled with our platform’s ability to integrate with existing systems, we are confident that our solution is the right choice for any fund looking for an extensible solution to simplify and manage the filing process.”

The NorthPoint Form PF Solution is an enterprise application and data repository assisting investment advisors to submit the Form PF filings. The solution provides easy-to-use data management tools to collect, classify, and aggregate the varied sources of data required for the filing. A rich user interface provides tools and reports to review, audit and sign-off on reporting instructions based on the fund's unique reporting elections. The entire process is monitored on a dashboard that shows the status of each section and the overall progress of the filing preparation. Filings can be prepared and submitted within the application, and all collected information is retained to provide audit trails of reported numbers.

NorthPoint offers practical insights and notes that investment advisors need to:

• Start early or it will be a fire drill around the reporting date. Funds usually misjudge the amount of time and collaboration necessary for their business units to complete a successful filing.
• Be aware that there is considerable room for interpretation in the way investment advisors complete Form PF. For many of the questions, there is no single answer. Reporting choices made now could significantly affect how funds may be viewed in future by investors.
• Create a “Form PF Working Committee” that is a cross-functional team consisting of members from different business units to facilitate communication and coordination.
• Approach the filing as a data and risk management exercise, not just a regulatory reporting requirement.
• Where possible, automate the mapping and collection of data through a Data Warehouse and automated data load functions to ensure a repeatable process and consistent filings.
• Identify a quarter for creating a ‘mock filing’ to test your data consistency and operation processes. This should cover identifying, collecting and reviewing data, along with completing the electronic submission to the production mirror site.

These broadly applicable lessons will help investment advisors be better prepared and confident when their reporting becomes mandatory.

Press release

www.northps.com

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