Vintage Year

Conventions in use

The Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS) 2020 recognise two methods: the year of the vehicle's first drawdown or capital call from investors, or the year in which the first committed capital from outside investors is closed and legally binding. Other conventions are also used: the year of first investment, the year of legal formation, and, in some LP records, the year the LP itself committed. Benchmark providers publish their own rule. Before comparing a fund with a vintage cohort, confirm which rule the manager used and which the dataset used.

Vintage-year benchmarking

Private fund benchmarks are built by vintage because entry valuations, financing conditions and exit markets differ by year, and because funds of different ages are at different points of the J-curve. Within a vintage, funds are ranked on net IRR, TVPI or DPI into quartiles (see quartile ranking and peer group). A fund placed in the wrong vintage is compared with funds that had more or less time to mature, which biases its ranking.

Vintage diversification and pacing

LPs commit to private funds across several vintages so that no single year's entry conditions dominate the portfolio. Commitment pacing models plan commitments year by year, and portfolio reports group exposure by vintage to show how much of NAV and unfunded capital comes from each market environment.

Special cases

• Evergreen and open-end funds have no single vintage; investors' entry dates differ. Some managers report performance by subscription year.
• Secondary funds have their own vintage, but buy interests in funds of earlier vintages; their exposure is to the underlying vintages.
• Co-investments and direct deals are usually grouped by the year of investment.
• Continuation vehicles are new vehicles with their own formation year, even though the assets were acquired earlier by the original fund (see continuation vehicle).
• Fund families with parallel or feeder vehicles share the main fund's vintage by convention.

Worked example

Examples are illustrative; figures are not market data.

Not the same as

• First Close: First close is an event; vintage year is a classification that may or may not be set by that event.
• Investment Period: The investment period is the window in which the fund may make new investments; the vintage is a single year label.

Common mistakes

• Presenting one vintage convention as the definition.
• Ranking a fund against a cohort built on a different vintage rule.
• Treating vintage as a marketing label rather than a benchmark input.
• Assigning an evergreen fund a single vintage and benchmarking it against closed-end cohorts.

Edge cases

• A first close late in December and a first call in January place the fund in adjacent vintages under the two GIPS methods.
• A fund that holds a first close but delays its first call for many months may look young against its first-close cohort.
• Restructured or re-launched funds may report the original vintage or the restructuring year; disclosure should say which.

Questions

External standards

Sources

1. GIPS Standards for Firms 2020 - Glossary (defined terms). CFA Institute, Glossary section of the 2020 edition. Status: Current (checked 2026-10-01). vintage year — supports: Two methods: first drawdown/capital call, or first legally binding close of outside commitments
2. Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS) for Firms 2020. CFA Institute, 2020 edition; effective 1 January 2020; required for GIPS Reports with periods ending on or after 31 December 2020. Status: Current (checked 2026-10-01). 2.A.27, footnote 16 — supports: Before 2020, PE primary funds had to be in composites defined by vintage year and strategy

• Quartile Ranking
• First Close
• Capital Call
• Commitment Pacing
• J-Curve
• Benchmark
• Continuation Vehicle (CV)

• Closed-End Fund
• Internal Rate of Return (IRR)
• Kaplan–Schoar Public Market Equivalent (KS-PME)
• Net IRR
• Public Market Equivalent (PME)
• Total Value to Paid-In (TVPI)