AllianceBernstein Leverages Ontra’s Insight to Create Single Source of Truth for Fund and Side Letter Compliance
Operationalized side letter compliance
Empowered multiple teams to collaborate efficiently
Enabled teams to find answers quickly
“By implementing Insight across our alternatives platform, we created a single source of truth across the whole organization. This allowed us to assign specific obligations and tasks to the appropriate stakeholders across our firm. In turn, we could quickly answer complex questions from our investors, drive organizational accountability, and stay ahead of the growing complexity of private funds documentation.”
Overview
AllianceBernstein is a leading global investment management and research firm with approximately $725 billion in assets under management. With 50+ years of industry expertise, AllianceBernstein provides its clients a wide range of solutions, including equities, fixed income, multi-asset products, and, more recently, alternative investments. As the firm’s alternatives business has grown steadily since its launch in 2009, so has the number of LPAs, side letters, and documentation that the firm must comply with globally.
Challenge
Rapidly growing firm needs to streamline investor obligations
Given the rapid growth of its alternatives platform, AllianceBernstein recognized the need to simplify LPA and side letter compliance. The large, globally distributed organization required a dedicated software solution that gave multiple internal teams visibility into the firm’s obligations to its investors.
AllianceBernstein’s VP of Alternatives Legal, Neal Kalechofsky, set out to find a solution that could support the organization at scale. Specifically, he needed a cost-effective solution that would enable stakeholders across the firm to access and be accountable for the growing number of obligations to investors contained in fund documents and side letters.
Solution
Ontra’s Insight creates a single source of truth for multiple teams
Decision-makers at AllianceBernstein identified Insight — Ontra’s AI-powered, purpose-built solution for fund obligation management — as a great fit for the firm’s needs. The software makes it easy to build multi-stakeholder workflows that drive alignment among various functions at the globally distributed firm. According to Kalechofsky, Insight facilitated crucial cross-functional collaboration, transparency, and accountability that kept pace with the company’s growing investor obligations.
“By implementing Insight across our alternatives platform, we were able to create a single source of truth across the whole organization. This allowed us to assign specific obligations and tasks to the appropriate stakeholders across our firm. In turn, we could quickly answer complex questions from our investors, drive organizational accountability, and, ultimately, stay ahead of the growing complexity of private funds documentation,” explained Neal Kalechofsky, VP of Alternatives Legal at AllianceBernstein.
The firm has partnered with Ontra for over three years now, and throughout that time, Insight has helped it manage compliance with all event-based and recurring obligations in fund documents and side letters. AllianceBernstein can use Insight to run quarterly compliance checks, conduct internal reviews, and prepare for SEC exams.
Implementing Insight provides AllianceBernstein with a centralized storage and workflow management solution. Insight has created significant time savings, allowing the firm to export the fund documents and data necessary to demonstrate side letter compliance in seconds — a task that can take hours or days when done manually.
With Insight, AllianceBernstein found a user-friendly tool that provided leverage to many functions at the firm — including legal, compliance, finance, investor relations, and business development professionals. Kalechofsky concluded, “We’re incredibly pleased with Ontra’s use of cutting-edge technology to deliver legal solutions optimized for quality, speed, and low cost.”
Published January 6, 2022