Vintage year

A private fund’s vintage year marks when it began deploying capital. Funds of the same vintage invested through the same market conditions, so they are compared with each other. Investors spread commitments across vintages to avoid concentrating on one point in the cycle.

Definitions differ: first close, first capital call or first investment. A policy should state which date fixes the vintage and where it is recorded. Example wording: “no more than 25% of commitments in one vintage year”.

Acclimetry’s vintage-year concentration reads the vintage from an approved field and never infers it from a first drawdown date or a fund name. Example: commitments of 600 in 2021 and 400 in 2022 put 60% in one vintage, a breach of a 50% cap. A commitment with no recorded vintage is a data gap (vintage-year data).