According to a Hedgeweek global survey, 82% of fund managers suggested capital raising is the biggest barrier they face. But like many sales related activities, it’s a numbers game. The more people you touch, the greater chance you have of raising capital. Managing the capital raising process in a structured and professional way maximizes your chance of successfully achieving your fundraising goals.
PARTNER CONTENT
By Laura Clarke, VP, Client Solutions, Opus Fund Services – According to a Hedgeweek global survey1, 82% of fund managers suggested capital raising is the biggest barrier they face. But like many sales related activities, it’s a numbers game. The more people you touch, the greater chance you have of raising capital. Managing the capital raising process in a structured and professional way maximizes your chance of successfully achieving your fundraising goals.
Investor prospecting
If a prospective investor doesn’t know your fund exists, they will never allocate you capital. So raising awareness is the challenge. Yet with an estimated 14m accredited households controlling $73tn and 76% of all private wealth in the USA2
With such challenges around investor prospecting, once relationships are identified, they should be carefully managed and nurtured. Identifying their specific needs and resources available, profiling investment history and building an understanding of where future opportunities lie. Identifying and qualifying leads for new or existing investors, and matching them to and recommending appropriate investment opportunities must be a continuous activity.
Managing conversion from prospect to investor
It takes time to build a rapport and trust with a fund manager, taking on average 14 months for a typical investor to be identified before they allocate to a fund. They monitor performance, read manager monthly updates, review offering materials, perform due dilligence and ultimately fill out the subscription documents. Maintaining a careful record of where a prospective investor sits in this pipeline is key. Using a CRM to handle this process would seem wise? But the reality is that many firms, both large and small, resort to using spreadsheets. In today’s competitive landscape with increasing competition for investors, using a structured CRM might just be the catalyst to expediate the process and ultimate increase the conversion rate.
The Opus CRM provides fund managers with the ability to centralize investor data, contacts, documents, and ongoing correspondence whilst providing investors with the transparency they seek. All essential investor information is stored within the CRM, so fund managers no longer need to sift through disparate files and spreadsheets to find what they are looking for. Also, the Opus CRM scales with the fund manager allowing an almost infinite number of relationships to be managed. The ability to categorize prospective investors with a “lead score” allows you to sort your audience and contacts via their level of engagement. Is too much time being spent trying to talk to people that have no interest in who you are, or what you do?
Investor onboarding
The reality is that identifying new investors is just one component of an overall platform for managing the end-to-end relationship. So what other considerations would need to be taken into account, and how does that impact how a fund manager goes about day-to-day activities? Once an allocator decides to invest in your fund, how can you make the onboarding process seamless? In a recent article published on Hedgeweek, Paula Fontecilla, Opus’ Product Manager wrote about the necessity to ‘Simplify investor onboarding for a competitive edge’. It covered key aspects such as ensuring the process was fast and easy, but equally secure. The Opus CRM is fully integrated with the Opus Digital Subscriptions product. The easy to use Dashboard allows the fund manager to publish digital subscription documents through the Opus CRM, and then monitor the process through to completion and onboarding.
Ongoing relationships
But once an investor is onboarded, the communications have only just begun. A CRM should be used from the relationships cradle to grave. Understanding the investor’s wants and needs, and managing the relationship through sharing timely and appropriate information and communication is a crucial element of this. Centralizing the management in an environment giving a holistic understanding of the engagement, progress and required actionable events clearly has its advantages. There has to be a focus on minimizing any delays in the process and reducing the possibility of investor churn. Timely communication is the foundation of excellent client service and will greatly enhance the overall investor relationship experience. Knowledge on what to share, when, and what actions have historically been taken should be readily available. A centralized one-stop shop of the relationship’s status supports outstanding processing, future fund or investor planning, and minimizes any delays that may put relationships at risk.
Summary
The Opus CRM is an end-to-end solution built with efficiency and automation in mind, fully in line with our technology led ethos. It enables efficient investor prospecting, the distribution, completion, submission, tracking and follow up of all investor transactions, including initial onboarding, digital subscription management as well as integrated Capital Call processing. Through the integral Events functionality, it can distribute appropriate subscription documents to potential investors through a secure interface with detailed activity tracking. This feature rich platform enables fund managers to review, endorse and verify submitted data before approving and submitting documents for processing and subsequent transactions for existing investors.
The full footprint of interactions with investors is also included, covering activities relating to, but not limited to redemptions, transfers, and profile changes. Ensuring that this is streamlined not only aids the forementioned, but also provides a rounded manager and investor experience. Whether it be electronic investor information gathering, workflow automation, shared synchronized data, technology as a differentiator, supported by first class fund administration support, streamlines the investor experience. Providing fund managers and their investors with an integrated investor management solution that reduces time, complexity and cost is clearly an allround winning requirement.
2 https://dqydj.com/accredited-investors-in-america/
Laura Clarke, VP, Client Solutions, Opus Fund Services – Laura currently serves as Vice President within the Client Solutions team. Her role centers around building and maintaining relationships with clients, organizing internal communications with operational departments, and educating clients on Opus’ latest technology enhancements. Laura has recently participated in the launch of Opus’ Digital Subscriptions and continues to support and assist clients with the latest features. Laura is from Halifax, NS and prior to joining Opus, she worked as a Team Lead at MUFG in Investor Operations.
