3 minutes

Three Critical Steps IR Teams Can Take Now to Streamline Investor Onboarding

In a highly competitive market, technology allows the crucial step of investor onboarding to be a seamless and efficient experience for all parties involved.

SS&C Intralinks investor onboarding

The investor onboarding stage of a fundraise can be a significant challenge for investors and investor relations (IR) teams alike. Generally speaking, it has been a notoriously inefficient and error-prone set of processes that slows fundraising and can impede the manager’s ability to bring capital into the fund.

Today, if an investor wants to invest in a fund, they have to manually complete a 50- to 80-page subscription document, using wet ink, and decipher complex legal language which often results in missed fields and errors.

In our latest webinar, I was joined by Johnathan Marr, senior director, e-Investor, SS&C Technologies, where we discussed how most funds experience only a 20 percent success rate when it comes to data completeness during the review process. That means managers are having a lot of back and forth with investors to remediate accuracy issues.

Investor onboarding is a critically important challenge managers face today. But it is also an opportunity to start your firm’s relationship with an investor — who you hope will invest in future opportunities — on the right foot and earn their trust from the get-go. That is why, as a follow-up to our recent webinar, we have outlined three critical steps you can take to ensure subscription packages are processed quickly and without error.

1. Digitize

Now that technology is available to streamline the investor onboarding process, funds should transition from wet ink signatures to electronic document processing. When subscription packages are submitted electronically there is less risk of missing regulatory requirements and other fields. This also speeds up the review process and significantly minimizes the number of interactions with investors.

2. Automate

Compared to a manual process, automation gives IR teams far more operational control over their entire pipeline of subscriptions. Additionally, automation gives visibility to compliance teams, legal teams and fund administration teams to obtain audit trails of all contact points with the investor. Having a comprehensive view ensures nothing slips through the cracks.

3. Leverage purpose-built IR technology platforms

Alternative investment firms have specific requirements that need to be considered when selecting an investor onboarding tool. Many generalized client onboarding tools do not offer certain capabilities, such as data storage and the ability to pre-populate investor data. Additionally, they do not offer pipeline visibility or reporting capabilities. Any tool designed for the alternative investments onboarding process must address these requirements to ensure an uplift in the success rate.

If managers want to remain competitive in both the short term and the long run, they must continue to find new ways to streamline fundraising using technology to enhance their IR activities.

Watch the full webinar recording here.

Meghan McAlpine

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