iLEVEL owns the data layer. It was never designed to own the decision layer.
iLEVEL serves more than 700 asset managers and allocators and is explicit about its scope: data collection, analytics, valuations, peer comparables, cash forecasting, capital structure analysis, and reporting workflows. That is the data half of the problem. The decision half — whether the IC approval still holds — is the layer none of the monitoring stack was built for.
What iLEVEL does well, and where the line is.
What iLEVEL is built for
Portfolio data collection, aggregation, and institutional reporting.
iLEVEL is the reference stack for standardising KPI collection from portfolio companies and rolling it up for analytics, valuations, cash forecasting, and LP-facing reporting. For institutional firms under LP scrutiny, iLEVEL shortens the distance between a portfolio company's quarterly submission and a consolidated fund view.
What it is not built for
Continuous evaluation of whether a prior IC decision still holds.
iLEVEL is explicit in its own positioning that it is not a fund accounting GL — and it is not a decision governance system either. It tells you what the data says. It does not maintain the original IC approval as a live, queryable object, and it does not evaluate whether current conditions invalidate the committee's approval basis.
Where Capital Refinery sits next to it
Below the KPIs, above the decision. The layer iLEVEL was not built to be.
Capital Refinery parses the IC memo and credit agreement into a structured decision record, binds live operator data to the assumptions that justified entry, and runs continuous decision validity scoring across every position. iLEVEL tells you the KPI. Capital Refinery tells you whether the decision behind the KPI is still defensible — and how long you have to act.
Where the lines fall.
| Capability | iLEVEL | Capital Refinery |
|---|---|---|
| Portfolio KPI aggregation | Strong — institutional standard | Consumes KPIs; not the primary surface |
| Cash forecasting and valuations | Strong — core module | Not the goal — bound to decision validity instead |
| Structured IC record at approval | No | Yes — thesis, assumptions, mitigants bound |
| Credit agreement as structured data | No | Yes — covenants parsed as policies-as-code |
| Decision validity scoring | No | Yes — live across the position |
| Time-to-consequence ranking | No | Yes — the metric iLEVEL does not surface |
The research behind this.
- Why Your Monitoring Dashboard Isn't a Decision TooliLEVEL, Allvue, Chronograph, Cobalt — and the structural difference between visibility and decision capability.
- Time-to-Consequence: The Metric Your Portfolio Tools Don't HaveThe ranking iLEVEL does not surface — and why it reframes how PE and credit teams measure risk.
- The Decision Integrity Gap48 sources, 14 vendors. iLEVEL, the rest of the monitoring layer, and the missing 7th.
Institutional readiness measurement
iLEVEL solves portfolio monitoring and LP reporting for GP fund admin and IR teams. Capital Refinery operates a category iLEVEL doesn’t: institutional readiness measurement — grading operating businesses (portfolio companies, pre-acquisition targets, or sell-side mandates) against the same 10-axis framework that buy-side ICs, lender credit committees, and LPs use to evaluate. The resulting artifact carries a deterministic fingerprint and a public verification URL.
The two product surfaces don’t compete — they operate at different layers of the stack. iLEVEL handles portfolio data aggregation and LP reporting; Capital Refinery handles structural readiness measurement on the operating business itself and decision integrity through the lifecycle. See institutional readiness and the same-engine architecture for the dimension iLEVEL doesn’t address.
See decision validity next to your iLEVEL KPIs.
If your team already runs iLEVEL, the natural next question is what governs the decision behind the numbers. Bring us a position from your portfolio and we'll show you on real data.
Keep iLEVEL if you need institutional portfolio data aggregation. Use Capital Refinery when you need a neutral, evidence-backed readiness artifact that shows what will survive institutional review.
Capital Refinery is the institutional measurement layer. It does not replace iLEVEL; it sits next to it. The decision to engage is a routing decision, not a swap.
Working with an advisor or AI consultant? Use CR as the independent measurement layer via the Modernization Impact Review. Want to shape the methodology? Apply as a design partner.