Performance data for the private equity and venture capital industry is often hard to come by — now, the industry trade association and investment advisory firm Cambridge Associates are teaming up to try and improve transparency in the Canadian market.

Canada’s Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (CVCA) Wednesday announced a partnership with Cambridge Associates to develop new benchmark performance data and statistics for the Canadian market.

The CVCA says that it has been “looking at ways to improve both the breadth and depth of the performance data available on Canadian PE and VC fund performance.” And, it’s going to be working with Cambridge Associates, which produces benchmark data from its proprietary database of institutional-quality PE and VC funds.

Cambridge has similar relationships with a number of other industry associations around the world, it notes. And, it says that return data will be disguised and aggregated to protect the confidentiality of individual funds and their underlying portfolio investments.

“One of the nice incremental benefits of the relationship with Cambridge is that they are also a leading investment advisor to foundations and endowments, private wealth, and corporate and government entities and they are therefore a potentially important resource for our GP members as they seek to raise new capital. As a result, while completely voluntary, we strongly urge all GPs to participate in this new initiative through the provision of quarterly performance data to Cambridge,” said Peter van der Velden, president of the CVCA and managing general partner of Lumira Capital Corp.

“Our goal is to make this information available to all members of the CVCA and to ensure that the CVCA always has the most accurate and timely information available for it members and other stakeholders in the ecosystem,” he added.