FOTechHub Bulletin: Family Office Technology News Roundup – September, 2023

Company news

28 September – Wealth.com, an estate planning platform, recruited Brian Hamburger as a strategic advisor. Hamburger is the founder, president and chief executive officer of MarketCounsel, a business and regulatory compliance consulting firm to independent investment advisers. Wealth.com also recently established an Advisor Council to enhance product innovations.

27 September – d1g1t, a wealth management platform, has completed a combined equity and debt financing round with MissionOG leading the equity investment, along with other investors: CI Financial; National Bank of Canada’s venture arm, NA Ventures; U.S./UK VC, Illuminate Financial, Purpose, and FigTree Financial – a multi-family office and a d1g1t client. CIBC Innovation Banking, the technology and innovation focused team within Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), led the round’s debt facility. CIBC Innovation Banking and FigTree Financial joined as new investors. The funding will facilitate their expansion in the U.S. and product development. The amount of the deal was not disclosed. d1g1t serves wealth Advisors, multi-family offices, RIAs, and broker dealers. It was created to provide an integrated platform that manages the entire wealth advisory life cycle.

21 September – London & Capital, an international wealth & asset manager based in the UK, collaborated with Addepar to bring data modeling, portfolio analytics, tailored investment management and performance reporting to its wealth management clients in the UK and around the globe. Established in 1986, London & Capital is a specialist wealth and asset manager working with private and institutional clients. Many of London & Capital’s private clients are international, with finances, business interests, property, and family across multiple countries. The company is known for advising US connected persons.

19 September – Mirador, a financial reporting and technology services provider, unveiled a strategic roadmap to expand into the institutional portfolio sector, focusing on endowments, foundations, and pensions, which currently constitute only 10% of its client base. Mirador says its consolidated reporting services have always been a perfect solution for institutional portfolio reporting, empowering institutional investment committees to orchestrate multiple investment mandates more easily across managers. This initiative includes hiring industry veteran Michael Anthony with family office and institutional experience at Bank of New York Mellon, Citizens Bank, Santander, and Boston Family Office Consultants, and the rollout of two concirege services – a Board Meeting Concierge (meeting planning, summary reporting, and meeting minutes), and a Private Investment Desk (investment document prep, closings, capital call management, reporting, and K-1 document management).

19 September – BlackRock joined the Allfunds Private Partners Program launched in July. Through this initiative, BlackRock will be able to expand access to its private markets offering across the Europe, Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific region while enhancing the services available to its existing clients.

18 September – Eton Solutions, the developer of the AtlasFive integrated platform for family offices, opened a new office in Dubai, UAE, demonstrating its dedication to the Middle East market. Founded in 2015 and originally originally built by the company founder for his own family office, Eton Solutions now has over 650 families on the platform managing over USD737 billion. Eton serves larger$1B + family offices, but it recently launched its new Administrative Family Office (AFO) targeting ultra-high-net-worth families starting from $50 million in assets, helping them to launch their own virtual family office with a fully outsourced middle and back office. (see more here).

14 September – BlackRock Private Investments Fund (BPIF) and BlackRock Private Credit Fund (BDEBT) are now available to wealth advisors on the +SUBSCRIBE platform that provides investor onboarding, electronic subscription documents, and order workflows for wealth investors seeking to invest in alternatives.

13 September – Canoe Intelligence said it has achieved a 100% YoY revenue growth due to global expansion following a $25 million Series B financing round in February 2023. To mark this milestone, they’re launching a brand platform, “Alts, smarter.” They’re expanding their platform to enhance workflow tools, dataset coverage, and create an integrated ecosystem for GPs, LPs, and Administrators.

13 September – Incline, a private equity firm, sold Foundation Source to GTRC, another PE firm. Joseph Mrak III was brought in as the new CEO. Mr. Mrak was formerly global head of wealth solutions at Refinitiv, and prior to that executive chairman of Solovis, CEO and chairman of FolioDynamix (today part of Envestnet). He succeeds existing Foundation Source president and CEO Sunil Garga, who will serve in an advisory capacity to the new CEO and the board during the transition. GTCR’s co-investors in the Foundation Source investment include colleges and universities, endowments, foundations and family offices. As part of the transaction, GTCR has committed significant capital to fund acquisitions, technology enhancements and organic growth opportunities, and enhance support for strategic channel partners, including private banks, trust companies, wealth managers and RIAs. Founded in 2000, Foundation Source provides back office functions and services to over 2,000 foundations representing more than $20 billion in charitable assets. In 2022, Foundation Source administered charitable grants totaling more than $1.3 billion on behalf of its clients (see more).

Product Updates

Canoe launched ‘email notifications’ for ‘data extracts’ feature that can be tailored to include the data points that are relevant to the client’s specific needs, and to the client’s delivery preferences in terms of timings and frequency. Canoe’s document receipt and scheduled extract alerts contain secure, direct links to the underlying documents and data extracts. This new feature can service a broad range of practical needs, for example: create a daily digest of upcoming calls and distributions, alongside due dates and relevant bank account details; create a monthly performance report on all the funds in portfolio on the first of the month; keep track of important data points, like holdings reports, net returns from performance estimates, or even K-1 information during tax season.

Opto Investments, a technology-driven private markets investment platform, launched custom funds capabilities for RIAs, enabling the creation of white-label fund strategies encompassing private credit, equity, real estate, venture capital, and infrastructure.

GreenHill Investment Reporting rolled out an enhanced solution for registered investment advisors (RIAs) through its ReportQuest investment performance reporting tool. Key features include centralized performance tracking, customizable reports, integration with leading custodial platforms for consolidated reporting, and dedicated U.S.-based account managers. Earlier this month GreenHill made its performance reporting functionality available on eCIO – an eVestech-powered platform for nonprofits, endowments, foundations, and religious organizations. GreenHill is an independent provider of investment performance reporting services established in 1991.

FinLab released PackHedge v.6.1, an update offering enhanced functionalities for family offices, portfolio managers, and investment teams tools for portfolio accounting and management. Features include general ledger, general journal, income statement and various portfolio windows/tabs as well as holdings window/tab. FinLab is a portfolio managment software founded in 1999 and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.

In-Depth 

How Reporting Platforms Price – A cheat sheet for family offices. Check out this useful piece from Shaun Parkin, Managing Director & Founder – Hall Road Investments based in Perth, Australia. He reached out to several global platforms and had them explain how they come up with their pricing. He aggregated their answers, breaking them down by cost consideration. 

And here’s a recently published in-depth overview of the SEC’s New Rules for Venture Capital and Other Private Fund Advisers from Cooley.