The Investor-Driven Data Battle: How GPs Are Upping Their Game

For too many firms, data remains a liability rather than an asset. Managers’ data is often siloed across teams, trapped in spreadsheets, or scattered among multiple asset servicers. Speaking to a range of firms, from VC’s to global managers, here’s what we’re seeing on the ground:

• Siloed data: Different teams maintain their own versions of the truth – finance, operations and IR often work from separate spreadsheets, with no way to reconcile quickly or confidently.
• A patchwork of asset servicer systems: Most managers juggle data feeds from multiple asset servicers, each with their own accounting systems, document portals and ‘quirks’ (for want of a better word…). None are really designed to serve the GP or LP experience. Often, even simple metrics like NAV or investor positions differ between servicers, leaving the GP stuck to normalise and reconcile the data themselves.
• Outdated tools and manual workarounds: Too often, critical investor data still lives in emailed PDFs, hard-coded spreadsheets, and aging legacy systems. The result’s a convoluted process, prone to errors and painfully slow.
• No single source of truth: “During one, albeit rather extreme, fundraising example, the manager, asset servicer and the placement agent all had different data points for the same data item, and nobody knew which one of them was right,” he said. Very few managers have a trusted, firm-wide single source of truth, and when discrepancies emerge, credibility and trust with LPs evaporate fast.

“When the same data point lives in several different places and no two numbers match,” Iain explains, “even answering a basic investor question or producing an accurate report becomes a nightmare. A typical private market manager might use 3-4 asset servicers too, each using their own accounting system or document portal, which fulfil the needs of the asset servicers, not the asset managers or owners.

Bad data doesn’t just slow managers down. It exposes them to operational risks, compliance issues, and reputational damage. It also burns resources. Many firms resort to shadow accounting teams to reconcile inconsistent data, but that’s often expensive, error-prone, and unsustainable – especially as margins tighten, pressure mounts and firms scale.

And it’s not just about costs. “Manual, frustrating data processes drive away top talent,” says Iain. “People don’t want to spend their days cleaning up spreadsheets or defending numbers under pressure.”

The good news? The industry’s rising to the challenge and progress is being made.

In just the past few years, there’s been a surge of innovation at the intersection of private markets, data, and tech. Advances in cloud infrastructure, machine learning, natural language processing, and data integration tools are making it far more realistic to clean, connect, and validate complex datasets at scale.

We’re seeing more managers – and their asset servicers – acknowledge that legacy processes and fragmented systems are no longer viable. Forward-thinking firms are actively investing in new solutions to:

• Automate the ingestion and reconciliation of administrator data
• Standardise and enrich unstructured documents like PDFs and statements
• Implement API-driven platforms to deliver real-time insights to internal teams and LPs
• Embed anomaly detection and validation logic to catch errors before they flow downstream

Crucially, it’s not just about the technology itself – but also about applying domain expertise to design processes that work in the nuanced world of private markets.

“We’re at an inflection point,” says Tony. “For the first time, managers can realistically expect to build a single source of truth for their data – without having to manually aggregate, normalise and validate it themselves. They’re able to deliver a level of transparency and responsiveness that investors now demand.”

At Lantern, we’re proud to be part of this broader movement – helping managers connect, cleanse, and validate data from across asset servicers and internal systems, and making it actionable.

By carefully blending technology with private markets expertise, we create a trusted, unified dataset – accessible through our platform or delivered directly into their internal models, tools, and portals via APIs.

“We’ve helped managers move beyond spreadsheets and shadow accounting teams to regain confidence in their numbers, meet deadlines, and deliver a superior investor experience” says Iain.

One $40B private equity manager, for example, struggled to reconcile conflicting data from four administrators, forcing them to build an expensive, manual shadow accounting operation – and still miss reporting deadlines. Lantern helped them ingest, validate, and standardize all asset servicer feeds, automatically flagging anomalies and making clean, trusted data available in real time for reporting and dashboards.

The era of easy money is over, and the bar for investor experience has never been higher. Managers who ignore the data challenge risk falling behind, burdened by inefficiency, errors, and lost credibility. But those who act now can gain a clear edge by delivering the transparency, responsiveness, and trust that today’s investors demand.

Fixing your data isn’t just about compliance or cost savings. It’s about positioning your firm to win – in this cycle and the next. The tools and expertise are out there. The question’s no longer if you should address the problem – but how soon. If you’d like to see how Lantern can up your data game, and provide a seamless GP and LP experience, then get it touch – we’d love to show you the platform in action.