The January Annex 4 reporting deadline is a significant wake-up call for alternative investment fund managers or AIFMs.

Although some UK alternative investment fund managers who registered early have reported in the last quarter of last year, the majority will be required to make their first reports by 31 January.  

Tim Thornton, the chief data officer at Mitsubishi UFJ Fund Services, told Compliance Matters: "With a potentially very tight turnaround between finalising net asset values and having to report, this will be a big test for managers and service providers as to whether they will be able to handle the data challenge.   

“The filing (i.e. submission) of information for Annex IV reporting poses significant challenges in extracting and transforming data from underlying systems to perform the necessary recalculations and reclassifications, while ensuring an appropriate audit trail and matching the information to the Annex IV questions and reporting format.

“For AIFMs who have been mapping and testing processes ahead of this month, January will be a test of whether the work put in has created a repeatable process. For those who have not prepared in advance the tasks could provide a significant wake-up call.”