More Firms Offering Platforms to Calculate Backup NAV

A report in FinOps describes the latest products that help fund managers create a backup or secondary NAV. These products emerge nearly three years after an outage left a service provider unable to calculate the NAV for dozens of funds in August 2015. Fund administrator Brown Brothers Harriman recently launched its infoNAV, which it describes as an “administrator oversight and risk management tool” that allows firms to monitor NAV creation performed by their third-party fund administrators. In addition to calculating a secondary or informational NAV at the share class level, InfoNAV allows asset managers to compare that secondary NAV to the administrator’s NAV, highlighting specific variations that may require review or risk mitigation, BBH said. Other firms such as LineData and Milestone Group offer NAV oversight platforms and have attracted major clients, including T. Rowe Price and Oppenheimer. The FinOps report discusses the cost and operational challenges of creating a secondary NAV whether done inhouse or outsourced. Fund managers have the option of relying on internal staff to create a back-up NAV from scratch, in addition to using a third-party technology provider, or a shadow accounting firm.