Key Takeaways
- • Dakota argues that private markets analytics has become a point of differentiation for family office and RIA software, as feature parity in portfolio accounting, reporting and CRM makes switching hard for buyers.
- • Citing the 2025 CAIS and Mercer survey of nearly 800 advisors, nine in 10 financial advisors now allocate to alternatives and 88% plan to increase those allocations over the next two years.
- • Per a KKR 2025 RIA survey cited in the article, the share of RIAs planning to increase private credit allocations rose from 15% to 53% year over year, and private equity from 45% to 74%.
- • Dakota presents an embedded peer benchmarking tool, the Peer Group Builder, that returns vintage-year and strategy-based peer medians and quartile rankings through an API, drawing on data for more than 18,000 private funds.
Summary
A sponsored article from Dakota, the LP and GP intelligence platform, contends that wealth management software providers can differentiate themselves through private markets analytics. The piece cites the 2025 CAIS and Mercer survey of nearly 800 advisors, which found that nine in 10 financial advisors now allocate to alternatives and 88% plan to increase those allocations over the next two years. Dakota argues that as private funds occupy a larger share of client portfolios, users increasingly expect reporting platforms to show how their funds compare with peers, not merely aggregate capital calls.
The article notes that competitors largely offer the same core capabilities, including portfolio accounting, performance reporting, client portals and workflow automation, making switching difficult for buyers. It also cites a KKR 2025 RIA survey showing that the share of RIAs planning to increase private credit allocations rose from 15% to 53% year over year, and private equity from 45% to 74%. More than three-quarters of respondents already use third-party platforms for private market investments. While these platforms track IRR, TVPI, DPI and RVPI, Dakota contends most cannot indicate whether a given IRR is top quartile or below median for its vintage and strategy.
Dakota outlines five ways embedded benchmarks can add value: turning standard reports into differentiators, keeping users within a single platform, supporting manager selection and monitoring, offering a premium analytics tier, and avoiding the cost of building a proprietary private fund database. As an illustration, the article describes a 2020 buyout fund reporting a 15.2% net IRR and 1.8x TVPI, which a benchmarked report would set against peer median figures and a quartile rank.
The article describes the Peer Group Builder workflow: users select an asset class and sub-strategy, choose a vintage year, enter net IRR or TVPI, and receive peer medians, relative performance and quartile or percentile rank, displayed within the host platform's interface. Dakota states it maintains performance data on more or 18,000+ private funds and offers API access, embedded dashboards and white-label premium modules to software partners. As a vendor-authored piece, these claims reflect Dakota's own positioning and have not been independently verified.
The article notes that competitors largely offer the same core capabilities, including portfolio accounting, performance reporting, client portals and workflow automation, making switching difficult for buyers. It also cites a KKR 2025 RIA survey showing that the share of RIAs planning to increase private credit allocations rose from 15% to 53% year over year, and private equity from 45% to 74%. More than three-quarters of respondents already use third-party platforms for private market investments. While these platforms track IRR, TVPI, DPI and RVPI, Dakota contends most cannot indicate whether a given IRR is top quartile or below median for its vintage and strategy.
Dakota outlines five ways embedded benchmarks can add value: turning standard reports into differentiators, keeping users within a single platform, supporting manager selection and monitoring, offering a premium analytics tier, and avoiding the cost of building a proprietary private fund database. As an illustration, the article describes a 2020 buyout fund reporting a 15.2% net IRR and 1.8x TVPI, which a benchmarked report would set against peer median figures and a quartile rank.
The article describes the Peer Group Builder workflow: users select an asset class and sub-strategy, choose a vintage year, enter net IRR or TVPI, and receive peer medians, relative performance and quartile or percentile rank, displayed within the host platform's interface. Dakota states it maintains performance data on more or 18,000+ private funds and offers API access, embedded dashboards and white-label premium modules to software partners. As a vendor-authored piece, these claims reflect Dakota's own positioning and have not been independently verified.
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