How We Got Here: The Collaborative Effort Behind ILPA’s New Reporting Standards

This time last year, stemming from the U.S. SEC’s Private Fund Advisers (PFA) rule, ILPA launched the Quarterly Reporting Standards Initiative (QRSI) to develop the next evolution of ILPA quarterly reporting standards. Given the crucial role that quarterly reporting plays in global LP-GP dynamics, ILPA designed this initiative to enhance standardization, transparency and comparability in reporting across geographies for all private fund investors.

The PFA rules included a set of requirements for quarterly reporting on 1) fees and expenses and 2) performance and cash flows. With the U.S. Fifth Circuit’s ruling to vacate the PFA rule in June 2024, the initiative evolved, shifting from adherence to the SEC’s former requirements to delivering the ILPA templates based on adoption, standardization and industry practices.

Hearing from Contributors to the Initiative

From the onset, ILPA received significant interest from hundreds of stakeholders throughout the industry supporting the initiative’s objective to develop new templates. Over 300 organizations signed on to join the QRSI, including representatives from LPs, GPs, fund of funds, fund administrators, consultants and other key industry participants.

The QRSI working group, split into two workstreams aligned with 1) fees and expenses and 2) performance, met weekly to discuss, debate, draft, vet and validate template elements. These weekly sessions identified conflicting perspectives, gathered critical inputs such as chart of accounts and bespoke reporting formats, tested complex calculation methodologies and achieved consensus on the final templates.

“As a key contributor to both the Performance Workstream, I have been involved with ILPA’s Quarterly Reporting Standards Initiative (QRSI) since day 1, and I’ve been satisfied with all efforts to date. A major success story has been bringing together representatives from both LPs and GPs to facilitate open discussions about what data would be most useful for investors, while also being relatively easy to produce by GPs.

While ILPA brought Workstream 2 together to specifically address the SEC’s PFAR requirements for performance, the Working Group has really evolved into a thought center where our industry has expanded the “adjacent possible” for building investor trust. The initial timeline for PFAR was very challenging, causing some important discussions to be truncated, but I am very excited to improve upon the areas where the PFAR deviated from industry standards and best practices.”

– Anne Anquillare, Head of Fund Services North America, CSC 

Additionally, the QRSI team formed a Steering Committee comprised of industry leadership to provide oversight for the initiative. The Steering Committee met monthly to discuss recent developments and to both identify and solve for potential risks.

“My experience serving on the Steering Committee for ILPA’s Quarterly Reporting Standards Initiative (QRSI) has been excellent. Since the onset, ILPA has hit the mark by ensuring representation from a diverse range of industry experts on the Steering Committee to vet and validate updates to the templates.

State Street, as an industry-leading private markets service provider, absolutely sees the need to work together to standardize and make necessary data available for investors to analyze their private market holdings. Even with the Fifth Circuit’s decision to vacate the Private Fund Advisers (PFA) rules, I fully support ILPA’s shift to a bottom-up, adoption-oriented approach.

I appreciate the hard work that ILPA, my fellow Steering Committee members and all other QRSI participants have delivered to encourage open dialogue and harmonization across this growing asset class. Overall, I am very satisfied with the QRS Initiative’s efforts to date and its plans going forward.”

– Marianne Oar, Managing Director, State Street

ILPA also formed a set of satellite groups segmented by organization type, each of which met monthly with the QRSI team to discuss initiative topics.

“I have been very satisfied with the ILPA QRS Initiative during my involvement as a Satellite Group Member. ILPA has done a great job with the monthly Satellite Group sessions, providing supplemental support after the calls and keeping everyone informed throughout.

Prior to the Fifth Circuit’s ruling to vacate the U.S. SEC’s Private Fund Advisers (PFA) rule, great efforts were made by the ILPA QRSI team to keep everyone very well-informed, with a clean bifurcation of additions to the ILPA Reporting Template based on SEC guidance at the time. I was pleased to see ILPA shift to an extended comment period following the ruling to test the updated templates throughout the industry.”

– Andrew Kesler, Senior Director, Petra Funds Group

During a public comment period on the draft templates, ILPA solicited feedback across organizational types and geographies.. Feedback often encompassed contributions from multiple internal teams at various organizations, thereby widening the scope of input from the industry.

As a result of the comment period, the QRSI team made several adjustments and finalized the templates by vetting with the Working Groups, Satellite Group and Steering Committee, in addition to direct validation sessions with large GPs, technology providers, industry bodies and academics.

ILPA released the finalized templates and guidance for their implementation on January 21.

Where Did We Land?

As a result of the QRSI comment period and subsequent finalization efforts, the team made several adjustments to the templates.

Key highlights of the 2025 ILPA Reporting Template include:

  • Breaking out internal chargebacks to identify expenses allocated or paid to GPs/Related Persons
  • Adding more granular external Partnership Expenses better-aligned to general ledgers
  • Creating a single, uniform level of detail for all GPs to provide with greater consistency with the reporting framework identified in governing documents and accounting standards

Key highlights of the 2025 ILPA Performance Template include:

  • Tables to capture cash flows and fund- and portfolio-level transaction type mapping for transparency into the calculation methodology for performance metrics
  • 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
  • Two versions available to support GP’s varying approaches fund level performance calculation methodology – one version on the basis of itemized cash flows (granular method), the other on the basis of grossed up cash flows (gross up method)

With the release of the updated ILPA Reporting Template and the new ILPA Performance Template, the industry now shifts to implementation and adoption of the new standards. The industry has a whole will benefit from these standards as it will provide LPs with greater transparency in a consistent format, reduce the volume of requests GPs receive for this key information, and provide Fund Administrators, Custodians and other key technology service providers with the framework to build into their systems to automate providing this data and support greater efficiency and more in-depth analysis by end-users. These new standards represent a meaningful step towards greater transparency and standardization for reporting and compliance, which are critical to supporting the alignment of interest and partnership between General Partners (GPs) and Limited Partners (LPs).

Implementation and Beyond

Responses from the QRSI comment period signaled positive trends in adoption. Nearly 70% of participants stated their intentions to adopt the updated ILPA Reporting Template. This represents a marked improvement over the existing adoption rate for the 2016 template version, which sits about 50% currently. Furthermore, of those surveyed on the new ILPA Performance Template, approximately 52% intend to adopt, including 100% of LPs surveyed.

Timeline for Implementing New Reporting Templates

To help arm organizations with the resources needed to achieve implementation by Q1 2026, the ILPA team will release supplemental documentation and other tools to help organizations prepare for providing and receiving the new templates, both alongside template rollout and continuing through 2025.

While the rollout of the new templates marks a major milestone effort, ILPA aims to keep the momentum into 2025 and beyond by continuing to engage the industry. Broader Satellite Group sessions will also continue through 2025, allowing those who are interested to stay up-to-date and provide recommendations on helpful resources for ILPA to prioritize. One key priority on the horizon includes refreshing the ILPA Capital Call & Distribution Template to align with the changes to the new ILPA Reporting Template and Performance Template.

To learn more about endorsers or to inquire about your own organization’s endorsement, please visit the template pages on the ILPA website.

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ILPA Reporting Template

ILPA Performance Template

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