The enhancements are designed to assist hedge fund managers as they face increased pressure to meet the growing demand for transparency, risk mitigation, and daily reporting being placed on them by their institutional clients.

SEI's enhanced workflow automates the middle- and back-office functions of hedge fund operations, creating efficiencies that allow SEI to provide daily pricing and valuation services, profit and loss (P&L), as well as daily net asset values (NAVs) down to the investor level. Additional benefits of SEI's workflow technology and capabilities include:

• increasing operational transparency
  
• creating a paperless operational process
  
• improving communication between the investment manager and SEI
  
• facilitating operational risk management by capturing audit trails
  
• streamlining the annual audit process by creating easily-searchable indexed and archived records.

These capabilities have become increasingly important as hedge funds continue to adapt to the changing needs and demands of a growing institutional client base.

Additionally, SEI's middle office outsourcing services for single manager hedge funds continue to expand as the demand for institutional processes, independent third-party providers and improved investor reporting reaches an all-time high amid changing and increasingly volatile market conditions. SEI offers premium outsourcing services for large, single manager hedge funds who desire daily portfolio processing and reporting capabilities, including independent valuation, trade capture, reconciliation, and portfolio analytics, in addition to investor servicing, fund administration, and fund accounting.

"Managers are being driven by their investors to have a transparent, independent, and process-driven operational environment. In this 'Era of the Investor', our focus continues to be on developing and enhancing solutions to help our clients meet and exceed their investors' needs and concerns," said Steve Meyer, Executive Vice President, SEI and Head of SEI's Investment Manager Services division. "Our technology systems and processes provide managers with a daily reporting environment that can enhance their decision making and analytics, as well as provide their clients with a greater level of transparency, which is an absolute requirement in today's world. Our ongoing investments in workflow automation have us well positioned to help our clients face these new market realities."

SEI currently provides daily estimated NAVs and P&L reporting for 40 percent of the funds it administers. SEI administers over $135 billion in alternative investment assets.