Access the private markets’ most trusted benchmarks

Cambridge Associates Private Market Benchmarks are now accessible on iLEVEL

For the first time ever, we now offer Cambridge Associates (CA) Private Market Benchmarks within our iLEVEL portfolio monitoring software. This integration offers iLEVEL users a uniquely powerful tool for understanding fund performance in a dynamic and customizable environment.

Recognized globally as the source of one of the most trusted and widely adopted benchmarks for global private market investors, the Cambridge Associates Benchmarks afford access to the highest quality data to help you fundraise, monitor fund performance, select fund managers, better manage risk, and discover investment opportunities.

The Cambridge Associates Benchmarks offer comprehensive performance history for more than 8,600 funds sponsored by over 2,200 fund managers. The benchmarks encompass various regions and strategies, including private equity, venture capital, real assets and private credit. These valuable datasets support numerous use cases for both General Partners (GPs) and Limited Partners (LPs), including performance measurement and monitoring, risk management, valuation, asset allocation, investment due diligence and capital raising.

Accurate… The benchmarks are constructed from high quality data, with underlying information sourced directly from investment fund managers' quarterly and annual audited financial statements —not from web-harvested public documents like public pension documents or FOIA requests. Manager-reported returns are independently verified by Cambridge Associates using since-inception quarterly cash flows and NAVs for each fund. In addition, the direct integration of CA's benchmark data into iLEVEL mitigates the risk of errors from manual data entry or spreadsheet-based analysis.

Timely… iLEVEL users benefit from private investment benchmark data available alongside their own portfolio data for up-to-date analysis and reporting. iLEVEL offers access to the Preliminary data, which is released once a given asset class is at least 50% updated for the quarter, and refreshes regularly as more funds report. The final Published data is released approximately four-five months after quarter-end.

…and complete private investment performance data. Substantially more data is now available on our iLEVEL platform, allowing for more granular evaluation than ever. Benchmark performance is available on a "since inception" or "horizon" basis. Data is available for side-by-side reporting with iLEVEL performance metrics, e.g., Net internal rate of return (net IRR), Total Value to Paid In (TVPI), Distributed to Paid In (DPI), and Residual Value to Paid In (RVPI) ratios.

Benchmark use cases for general partners:

• Marketing: Show performance against peer groups while fundraising; better position your fund by harvesting fresh insights from more granular data.
• Portfolio Monitoring: Assess the performance of each of your funds and your broader private markets portfolio.
• Competitive Intelligence: GPs can assess their track record against a benchmark to understand how their fund(s) is performing against a peer group, or different strategies or regions.

Benchmark use cases for limited partners:

• Portfolio Monitoring: Assess the performance of each of your funds and your broader private markets portfolio.
• Fund Selection: While conducting due diligence, assess a manager's track record against a benchmark.
• Investment comparison and decision evaluation: Assess their investment performance relative to comparable benchmarks and evaluate their strategic asset allocation.

Stay tuned for additional feature releases, including visualizations, expanded views, robust analytics, and currency data, in the months to come.

Explore the range of historical Private Investment Benchmark Reports.

S&P Global provides industry-leading data, software and technology platforms and managed services to tackle some of the most difficult challenges in financial markets. We help our customers better understand complicated markets, reduce risk, operate more efficiently and comply with financial regulation.

This article was published by S&P Global Market Intelligence and not by S&P Global Ratings, which is a separately managed division of S&P Global.