How It Came Together
The idea didn’t start on a whiteboard; it started in the field. Our conversations with existing and prospective clients surfaced the same gap repeatedly: There wasn’t a product built specifically to bring debt and hedge data together at the portfolio company level. We asked around, including at firms running much larger, more complex books and heard versions of the same answer: “Nothing purpose-built exists for this.”
We didn’t start from scratch: Through our ongoing work designing hedge programs, managing day-to-day execution as well as advising on fund finance and managing debt operations efficiently via our tech, we already have a strong foothold in the underlying activity (e.g., we execute over $600B in derivative trades for our clients annually). We therefore had a real advantage in understanding what a working solution to these challenges needed to look like.
Prior to launch, we tested the layout with the specialists who run hedging programs and manage facilities on Horizon day-to-day. We iterated on the grouping logic, forecasting views, and most relevant analytics until it matched how our clients actually think about their exposures.
The Need It Addresses
The core need lies across two vectors that are usually tracked separately – to enable GPs to answer: “What are your liabilities?” and “What have you hedged?”. The new PortfolioView consolidates debt and derivatives into a single repository at three levels; the individual portfolio company, the fund and the manager overall. A GP with three funds and ten portfolio companies apiece is really managing thirty distinct exposures – some hedged, some not. The Dashboard can now show coverages on all thirty exposures – in one place – and rolls them up cleanly.
PortfolioView offers more than a snapshot of today’s exposures. The Dashboard adds forward-looking analytics, cash flow projections, interest cost sensitivity, and hedge unwind risk, so teams can run rate analysis on demand and see the potential impact. A dynamic hedge ratio view shows how much of a position’s exposure is protected over time, so a team can see a coverage step-down or a policy threshold at risk before it becomes a surprise. And because Horizon is a single source of truth for all debt and hedging data, the Dashboard also becomes a practical tool for staying ahead of maturities across both financing and derivatives, so a hedge program stays within its defined governance bounds.
What Changes for Your Team
With a unified view of interest rate exposures from debt and hedges, teams no longer have to toggle between disparate spreadsheets and systems to make manual risk assessments.
The PortfolioView Interest Rate Dashboard empowers analysis when it comes to sizing the next hedge, efficiently refinancing debt and prepping for the next investment committee meeting. The data is now available on demand, so that teams can make better decisions, more quickly, and stay focused on generating returns.
Looking Ahead
Our technology has evolved over the 15 years out of discussions with our clients. “Purpose-built for private capital” means we focus exclusively on what matters for managers. This latest release brings together disparate datasets, so GPs are better positioned to adapt to change and deliver consistent performance.
