Client: Investment advisory firm

Client's Goals: Business process outsourcing - outsourced finance operations, decision support

Our Team's Role: Our BPO team maintains books for several special purpose vehicles (blocker entities).

An investment advisory firm was rapidly opening blocker entities to house private credit investments. It was not cost efficient or practicable for the firm to scale up its accounting department to the level required for timely preparation of the books and tax returns, and the added work delayed the close of their funds’ books. Citrin Cooperman’s Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Practice was engaged to record the monthly bank activity and prepare allocation files. As the engagement grew, the BPO team expanded and took on additional responsibilities, such as preparing partner capital statements, maintaining loan and investment schedules, and assisting with auditor requests.

Challenges

• The firm has tight quarterly deadlines to finalize the blocker entities’ books in order to close their funds’ books.
• It was not cost efficient or practicable for the firm to increase staffing in line with the workload the blockers created.

Citrin Cooperman's Approach

• Our team developed a plan and put in place a timeline for all the activity to be recorded and the financial reporting to be completed in a timely manner each month.
• Citrin Cooperman put together a team that was sized just right for the workload and developed the team in line with the firm’s growth.
• Our team maintained regular communication in order to understand the firm’s needs in real time and adjust accordingly.

Results

• The accounting department was able to expedite the closing process for their funds because of the timely and accurate books Citrin Cooperman provided.
• The accounting department was able to focus on reviewing blocker books and closing their funds’ books since our scalable team freed up their employees.
• The firm entrusted Citrin Cooperman to continue taking on more work as the they have grown to assist them with their reporting needs.