April 29, 2026
Head of Marketing
Private markets have an operational problem. LPAs have grown more complex. Side letter negotiations have multiplied. Fund structures have become more layered. And the LP base, once a manageable group of institutional allocators, is expanding into retail channels that the existing operational model was never designed to serve.
In April 2026, qashqade partnered with Private Equity Wire for a webinar bringing together voices from across the ecosystem: a major public pension fund, a global GP, a leading fund administrator, and qashqade CEO Oliver Freigang. The conversation moved through four areas: the LP/GP relationship and its contractual foundations, the volume problem created by retail and feeder structures, the future of investor experience, and the genuine role of AI in fund operations. What emerged was a picture of an industry mid-transition, with a clear-eyed view of where the gaps are.
The video below captures the full panel discussion, including the sharper exchanges that a summary inevitably compresses. If your firm is navigating any of the following:
the full session is worth your time.
Speakers: Oliver Freigang (qashqade), Steven Merriett (OPERS), Jordan Rothberg (IQ-EQ), Karen Sands (Federated Hermes Private Equity). Moderated by Manas Singh (Hedgeweek).
Every fund rests on a limited partnership agreement, but the reality is that very few funds have a single, clean version of the truth. Side letters carve out exceptions. Terms vary by investor class. Fee structures, hurdle rates, and distribution waterfalls can differ materially from one LP to the next within the same vehicle. Managing that complexity manually — in spreadsheets, or in the institutional memory of a finance team — introduces compounding risk at every point in the fund lifecycle.
When waterfall calculations fail, they tend to fail quietly. A confident, internally consistent answer that is nonetheless materially wrong is harder to catch than an obvious error. That risk increases with every additional layer of structural complexity: tiered carry, catch-up provisions, multi-vintage mechanics, cross-fund clawback exposure. The case for using LPA logic in a purpose-built system is really about governance and not just efficiency.
Institutional-scale operations built for a handful of sophisticated LPs with bespoke agreements, do not extend to retail scale by default. Feeder structures, wealth platforms, and democratized access vehicles bring a different kind of complexity: high volumes, diverse individual terms, and LP reporting expectations that are often higher, not lower, than institutional norms.
Continuation vehicles and evergreen funds compound this further. With no fixed end date and no clean distribution moment, these structures demand continuous fee calculation, persistent audit trails, and logic that accounts for inherited obligations from prior vehicles. The panel's view: operational infrastructure designed for traditional closed-end funds is simply not the right tool for this environment.
The exchange that generated most discussion was on the LP perspective. At what point does operational weakness become a reason not to re-up, regardless of investment performance? The answer from the LP on the panel was direct: it already is, for some allocators. A GP that cannot produce a clean, auditable distribution trail raises governance questions that investment performance cannot fully offset.
This is increasingly reflected in operational due diligence. A formal ODD finding travels. The reputational cost is not confined to a single LP relationship.
Four visions of the future emerged. Steve described a world of better coordination between LPs and GPs on data access — a portal-like experience where LPs can retrieve the data they need, when they need it, without endless phone calls and emails. Karen identified taxonomy standardization as the missing foundation: there are too many different names for the same thing across the industry, and without a common language, even the best technology cannot deliver end-to-end solutions. Jordan shared his view on identifying the partners that are taking the right next steps with AI to be a long-term partner. Oliver predicted that the market will consolidate around a set of best-in-class specialist tools, embedded into a larger platform with an AI layer on top and that qashqade is positioning to be part of that ecosystem rather than building a one-stop shop. The firms that will win, the panel agreed, are those treating operational infrastructure as a strategic asset today.
The webinar closed with an honest assessment of AI's role in fund operations. The areas where AI is adding genuine value today: document review and clause extraction from LPAs, anomaly detection across large datasets, and drafting assistance in reporting workflows. These are well-defined, bounded applications where AI operates as a capable co-pilot.
Oliver believes that where it falls short is in the calculation layer itself. Waterfall distributions are legally binding: they require identical outputs from identical inputs, every time, with a version-controlled audit trail that can be interrogated years later. That is architecturally incompatible with how language models work. The panel’s view: AI will be a capability multiplier for those who adapt, and a threat to those who do not. Steve noted that OPERS has had to open the gates to AI out of operational necessity — the data demands are simply too great — but that governance and security remain live concerns. The right framing, the panel agreed, is AI coupled with purpose-built tools, not AI replacing them.
Speak to our team to find out how qashqade can help your firm address the challenges covered in this session.
