Service Level Agreement (SLA)

Between a fund manager and its administrator or operations provider, SLAs typically specify deliverables such as daily reconciliations, estimated and final NAV, investor statements, capital call and distribution notices, and regulatory filings, together with the deadline for each (for example, a number of business days after month-end) and accuracy expectations.

SLAs work best alongside key performance indicators, a regular reporting pack, and a governance cadence — monthly service reviews and quarterly business reviews — where misses are analyzed and corrective actions agreed. Dependencies should be explicit: an SLA for final NAV depends on the timely receipt of prices, statements and approvals from the manager and third parties.

Pitfalls include SLAs that measure timeliness but not accuracy, targets that are never reported against, and no mechanism for revising SLAs as the fund grows or adds strategies. SLAs should be reviewed whenever services, systems or volumes change materially.