[RyGuy34]

I recently graduated with an MS in Accountancy and am looking for an accounting job in the financial services industry. It’s difficult to find entry-level accounting jobs at financial institutions but one area in which there seem to be a ton of job postings is at hedge fund and private equity fund administrators. I consider the hedge fund industry very interesting but there seems to be a negative perception of fund accountants, that all they do is data entry, etc… I recently interviewed with a smallish hedge fund administrator and the way the work was described, it seems like I would be given a great deal of responsibility. Because they service smaller hedge and private equity funds, I would have a hand in the entire accounting process for multiple funds: pricing the fund portfolio, reconciliation, financial statement preparation…

My question is whether or not the areas for growth are limited in fund accounting and whether or not I will be marketable if after a few years I wanted to jump to another area of accounting. I’ve also been applying for FP&A (budgeting) jobs. If anyone has any insights into that, I would appreciate it too.

[PurpleK]

Administrators are always looking for fund accountants. Unfortunately, most people that enter the hedge fund accounting world rarely ever leave since you are probably not very marketable outside of the hedge industry. In other words, make sure this is something you really want to do in the long run.

Also, from my personal experience, fund accountants at administrators do not often leave the fund admin side of the business. This might be due to a variety of reasons, but I believe it is primarily because the fund admin work can be easily learned by just about anyone and therefore not as valuable to the hedge fund business as someone with a tax or audit background. As part of a professional CFO/controller hedge fund network, only a handful started on the admin side. The majority (75%) come from a public accounting background from the 4 largest hedge fund public accounting firms (EY, PwC, Deloitte, Rothstein Kass). After that most others come from backgrounds with large prime brokers (UBS, Morgan Stanley).

In other words, if you are considering a controller or CFO role down the line, I would definitely suggest looking into working at one of the larger public accounting firms servicing hedge funds (note: RK soon to be acquired by KPMG, so I guess all of the Big 4).

[Mayo]

Caveat: I'm not a fund accountant but I audit some PE clients.

“This might be due to a variety of reasons, but I believe it is primarily because the fund admin work can be easily learned by just about anyone and therefore not as valuable to the hedge fund business as someone with a tax or audit background. “

There seems some truth in this. I have a Manager on my PE client that once told me something like “Fair Value/Fund Accounting is pretty specialized and can seem confusing at first. But once you got it, it's pretty simple outside of really complex transactions. “

For perspective, around 80-90% of the PE firm's Senior Accountants have a public accounting background. All the Controllers were Assistant Controllers in the firm before promotion. All the Assistant Controllers are ex-Big 4 auditors. I haven't seen any Senior accountants move up to Assistant Controller yet. Big 4 or otherwise.

However, this is ONE client, so take my experience with a grain of salt.

Mayo, BBA, Macc

[RyGuy34]

I could understand public accountants being more marketable for sure, but how does it compare to other areas of private accounting?

[Mayo]

“how does it compare to other areas of private accounting?”

I have some friends that audit hedge funds, PE funds, and mutual funds. It leads me to believe that, although not the same, all have similarities. Which to me means a transition between the three should not be extremely difficult.

Outside of that though, it gets harder the more specialized you get. Especially in Finacnial Services, entire aspects of traditional business models are never encountered. Think sales, COGS, inventories, fixed assets, sales based revenue recognition, R&D, etc. So I would imagine it'd be more of a stretch to transition at the more senior levels beyond Senior Accountant. Even other financial services industries could be tough. Insurance and Banking, for example, are both highly regulated industries with their own set of specialized rules that the firms must adhere to (insurance has Stat accounting and Banking has the whole backwards debts and credits thing with cash as well as tons of other regulations since the financial crisis).

It's all conjecture of course, but something to think about at least.

Mayo, BBA, Macc

[nolifecpa]

i've been a fund acct for mutual funds and hedge funds so here's my take. mutual fund accounting is all data entry. alot of the work is automated so you can do the job without learning anything. hedge fund accounting is a bit more interesting as you are more hands on with the process as you mentioned (recon, pricing, FS prep). hedge funds typically price monthly so your busy time will be the first couple of weeks of the month. the rest of the month is pretty much reconciling and getting ready for month end. i think PE is pretty much the same a hedge but they typically price quarterly

since fund acct is so specialized you will typically be label as just a fund accountant, even tho its partnership accounting, which is fine if you like the industry and live in a place like ny or chicago where there are a ton of funds but i haven't really seen a fund acct go into another area of acctg. or you can try and go to the client side and work at the fund

if you want to keep your options open big 4 experience is key

REG-65,71,74,73,70,74,79
BEC-60's,60's,69,71,76*,78
FAR-67,66,65,79
AUD-54,60's,65,83*,69,80
*expired

DONE

[hutchinson29]

This might be a terrible question, I know the above replies have mentioned mutual funds, ect. But is this in any way related to fund accounting for gov. and NFP? Like where funds are put aside into restricted and then removed from restricted?

[nolifecpa]

@hutchinson29 nope. Totally diff subject

REG-65,71,74,73,70,74,79
BEC-60's,60's,69,71,76*,78
FAR-67,66,65,79
AUD-54,60's,65,83*,69,80
*expired

DONE

[Anonymous]

I was at a big 4 in nyc, my clients were big mutual funds, hedge fund and PE. I knew all my contacts( manager/vp level) at the clients all had big 4 experience. It is a very specialized field. When I was searching for jobs after nearly 4 years at big 4, it was difficult to land a job outside of fund accounting. As I was trying to change the field and did not want to do financial service anymore.

[Author]

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