About 4Pines Fund Services
4Pines Fund Services is a fund administrator dedicated to providing premium service that scales to private capital clients’ needs at every stage of growth. They’ve distinguished themselves with a high touch experience and strategic counsel. The company’s founders wanted software built to ensure best-in-class services now and into the future.
“When prospects see what we can do on the Allvue platform, it opens their eyes.”
-Mike Trinkaus, 4Pines CEO & Co-Founder
Why 4Pines Selected Allvue
When CEO and Co-Founder Mike Trinkaus started 4Pines, he and his co-founders knew from their experience in the industry, and as former private capital CFOs, that technology was going to be essential to delivering high quality talent at scale. “We knew we needed to use technology differently if we’re going to do this,” Trinkaus told Allvue. “And we knew we needed software that could keep up with our demands and our ambition to raise the standard in our industry.”
The founding team had deep knowledge of fund accounting and administration, and they knew to provide the level of professional service necessary, they would need a system powerful enough to encompass a full set of workflows that could be configured to allow fund managers to lean in to their evolving and increasingly complex data management needs.
After an extensive vetting of the technology landscape, Trinkaus and his team decided Allvue should be the technological core of 4Pines’ platform.
“I was familiar with Allvue already and familiar with their team,” he said. “After my tech team ran their analysis, it was clear that, based on the flexibility of the platform combined with the enterprise-grade structure, Allvue was the right choice.”
Since that decision, 4Pines has enjoyed extensive growth and developed a deep partnership with Allvue. Here are three ways Allvue has helped 4Pines grow to the industry leader it is now: by building trust with prospects, meeting evolving client needs, and handling data management challenges.
Allvue Helps 4Pines Build Trust with Prospects
“When prospects see what we can do on the Allvue platform, it opens their eyes,” Trinkaus said. Even when prospecting to industry veterans who were familiar with the scope and capabilities of other systems, 4Pines finds that the power they are able to deliver from the Allvue platform makes an impression.
“Just the other day, we were talking with a prospect who uses a different system for their accounting and reporting,” Trinkaus said. “We brought them in and showed them the Allvue platform and they said, wow, this is fantastic, we have to get this.”
Allvue Helps 4Pines Meet Evolving Client Needs
“Allvue is a powerful system that does a lot of things very well, from partnership accounting to allocations and getting the fundamentals right so we can customize on top of it,” Trinkaus explained. Allvue’s cloud-based capabilities allow 4Pines to offer:
- Customized, real-time reporting
- Single multi-currency general ledger
- 24/7 cloud-based client and investor portals
- Waterfall modeling tools
Allvue’s broad scope of capabilities and deep level of flexibility helps 4Pines to easily meet their clients’ changing needs. With Allvue providing Software as a Service built on Microsoft’s enterprise platform, Trinkaus and company can prepare for the changing requirements facing 4Pines’ clients including proposed SEC regulations on private investment funds that call for a short reporting turnaround and increased investor queries during market turbulence.
Allvue Helps 4Pines Handle Data Management Challenges
Over the long term, Trinkaus believes the industry’s biggest challenge will be data management.
“We need to get data as efficiently as we can,” Trinkaus said. “We see Allvue as a partner to help us solve the data problem.”
As private equity firms collect more and more data, and as more stakeholders – from internal teams and service providers to auditors, lawyers, and regulators – need access to that data, data management becomes an increasingly complex challenge. Because Allvue leverages a single source of data across its platform, allowing for drill-through reporting, maker-checker functionality, and fast report production, 4Pines is able to streamline their workflows and reduce risk.
“Getting the right data to the right people is big part of our mission,” Trinkaus said. “We partnered with Allvue to help us do that.”
4Pines and Allvue: Tech Enabled, Service Driven
Ultimately, Trinkaus and his team see the future of fund administration as something that is tech enabled and talent driven. Helping their clients navigate an evolving landscape, secure a firm grasp of increasingly complex data workflows, and prosper in a volatile market requires best-in-class customer service. 4Pines leverages Allvue’s software to simplify and streamline challenging and cumbersome workflows, so they can focus on delivering high touch counsel and service.
“Tech has to be the backbone of the future,” Trinkaus said. And with Allvue, 4Pines will be able to continue its tech enabled, service driven approach well into the future.About Allvue
Allvue is a leading provider of investment management solutions for fund managers, investors, and administrators in the alternative investments industry. We offer innovative, configurable investment software that eliminates the barriers between systems, information, and people, optimizing decision making and streamlining processes to meet investor needs across private debt, private equity, and other alternative asset classes.
