This Week’s Vendor News

NEW & UPDATED PRODUCTS

Venture360 has launched Investor Profiles, designed to offer insights and a refreshed look to serve investor needs. Venture 360 has also enhanced its verification processes to include advanced profile verification features and AML compliance, ensuring a more secure investment experience for users. ↗

Infrrd has launched MortgageCheckai, a loan quality control automation solution. MortgageCheckai, is designed to expedite pre-fund and post-close loan audits for mortgage lenders and servicers. With this new technology, loan closers or QC auditors can now save time by reducing the manual review of loan documents by at least 50%. Infrrd has teamed up with Asurity, a provider of compliance-focused services and solutions, to design MortgageCheckai. Some key functionalities of the product are: auto-stacking of loan documents, advanced document versioning, reports document, data, and fee issues, built-in CD balancer and change-tracking and audit trails. ↗

Flow has launched a new feature on its platform, Investor Data Review. Flow users can collect structured data from LPs through digital onboarding workflows and ad-hoc task assignments. Now, this latest release enables fund managers and service providers to review and extract this data for use across external systems. Using Investor Data Review offers users several core capabilities to streamline the management and review of investor data. These are: accessible data, hyperlinked documents and downloadable .zip file. ↗

RelPro has unveiled Local Market Research on its platform. Local Market Research delivers market intelligence to help commercial and business bankers identify new opportunities in their local markets. Powered by its data integration with Rivel Banking Research, Local Market Research provides state-level customer experience metrics based on interviews with business banking customers, bankers can gain insights into competitors’ vulnerabilities and customers’ key experience drivers. ↗

SESAMm has introduced its new ESG Controversy Risk Exposure Heatmap, which provides a visual way to assess an entity’s reputational risk profile. With an overview of ESG risks, users can zero in on areas of concern and prioritize their next steps. ↗

Position Green's Sustainable Investment ESG Due Diligence module is now live. Features of this new product include: 1 - Evaluate ESG-related factors during the pre-investment phase. 2 - Guidance and instructions to support users in the risk assessments with up to 30 sustainability factors. 3 - Expert advisory methodologies enabling users to conduct due diligence independently. 4 - Automatic and actionable recommendations based on gap findings. ↗

Maestro has introduced new features and functionality enhancements on its platform. Benefits of these new features include: greater configurability, flexibility, and a more connected and seamless experience across the platform for PE sponsors and their portfolio companies. The new and enhanced developments include: visualization powered by PowerBI, analytics upgrades, reporting flexibility and project management features. Additionally, Maestro continues to enhance the overall interconnectivity around core features to offer a more cohesive and customizable experience. ↗

Addepar has announced new platform updates from Q2, with a focus on streamlining workflows and enriching data analysis. Addepar has accelerated reporting to handle small and large reports simultaneously, introduced advanced filtering capabilities, and implemented flexible billing options. ↗

ValueWorks has launched its new Metrics Library, crafted to enhance executive and managerial decision-making. The Metrics Library offers a curated collection of around 20 industry-specific KPIs and benchmarks, tailored to deliver immediate insights and drive improved business outcomes. ↗

S&P Global has unveiled the Headcount Analytics dataset on its platform. The Headcount Analytics dataset provides a view of a company's performance and investment focus by combining S&P Capital IQ Financials and Transactions data, as well as other sources. This dataset provides a valuable way to track company growth, especially when a company's financials aren't publicly available. This dataset includes: monthly updates, analysis and time series data. ↗

Salesforce has announced Partner Connect, a new feature for its Partner Relationship Management solution. This new feature provides businesses with the ability to share real-time visibility into partner channel sales and make it easy for teams working across CRM platforms to streamline deals shared across businesses. Partner Connect, which will be available this fall, makes it simple for teams to focus and collaborate. With Partner Connect’s field mapping functionality, teams can specify which fields get updated across partner CRM platforms and determine how best to match the data in one given CRM with another. This data harmonization helps ensure that data is both reliable and also securely shared. ↗

SS&C Technologies has unveiled new releases across its full line of SS&C Advent and Eze solutions, including Geneva, Genesis, Eze OEMS, Eze Eclipse, and other related platforms. To start with, SS&C Advent has introduced the Genesis platform to provide a connected investment experience across the front, middle, and back offices. The platform gives clients access to real-time data across the accounting, portfolio management, and trade order management applications. Additionally, Geneva introduced the ability to construct and implement bespoke fee structures for open-ended funds with Investor Fee Builder and Data Lens, a holistic solution for data procurement, curation, visualization and management, launched to enable customers to reduce technology costs and simplify workflows. ↗

MSCI has launched the MSCI Private Capital Indexes, to enhance transparency in global private markets. Institutional investors can leverage these Indexes to meet their investment mandates and achieve long-term financial goals, while insights from these Indexes can enable strategic asset allocation for asset owners. ↗

SimCorp has launched the SimCorp Integration Model. With the SimCorp Integration Model, SimCorp is extending its commitment to openness, with defined standards and an open invitation to data vendors. For clients, this means minimal effort required to adopt a data vendor, which means that clients can now execute their chosen investment strategies with more flexibility. ↗

BeyondM&A has launched the first episode of a new Podcast series, Beyond Value Creation. This podcast series explores different views on how to create value in organizations, including how do we determine value in the first place, to building innovative and diverse teams and how different generations view technology. ↗

DEAL ACTIVITY

Bunch has announced the successful closing of its $15.5 million Series A. The round is led by global investor FinTech Collective, and existing investors including Cherry Ventures and Motive Ventures. With this new funding, bunch plans to accelerate its growth by expanding into new asset classes and geographies, with a focus on the UK market and private equity clients. The company will also invest in enhancing its platform capabilities, providing more insights to professional LPs through digital analytics and growing its team of fintech and investment experts. ↗

Acuity Knowledge Partners has announced the acquisition of PPA Group, a technology-enabled service provider based in Germany and Switzerland. The acquisition of PPA Group is a strategic investment to support Acuity’s commitment and growing presence in supporting best practices in commercial lending. ↗

GeoWealth, a proprietary technology and turnkey asset management platform, has closed a $18 million growth investment led by BlackRock. GeoWealth will use the funding to support the development of offerings that enable advisors to meet client demand for access to a broad range of asset types in a unified account. Kayne Anderson Growth Capital participated in the round, as did J.P. Morgan Asset Management. ↗

PARTNERSHIPS & INTEGRATIONS

S&P Global Market Intelligence has launched an integration between S&P Global Market Intelligence’s ClearPar and Tax Utility platforms. This integration addresses an operational challenge by streamlining trade settlement workflows, enhancing efficiency, and significantly reducing risks. Now, users of ClearPar can access tax forms directly through the platform, which reduces queries and minimizes withholding risks. ↗

Canoe Intelligence and Osyte, a total portfolio multi-asset investments and liquidity management solution, have announced an integration partnership aimed at delivering mutual clients streamlined workflows for connecting documents and data for alternative investments. This partnership provides an integrated solution for total portfolio and alts management, including alts data acquisition, multi-asset portfolio management, illiquid asset trading, and liquidity management. Canoe brings in the alts data and Osyte helps clients make informed investment decisions across the whole portfolio (public & private markets) with that data. The partnership offers an easy implementation and onboarding process for clients of both companies. ↗

Salesforce and Workday have formed a strategic partnership and unveiled a new AI employee service agent. This new AI employee service agent will automate time-consuming tasks, provide personalized support, and surface data-driven insights. The two companies will establish a common data foundation that unifies HR and financial data from Workday with CRM data from Salesforce, enabling AI-powered use cases that boost productivity, lower costs, and improve the employee experience. ↗

Perigon Wealth Management has partnered with iCapital to launch new investment platform. iCapital's operating system seamlessly integrates with Perigon's existing platform and tools to automate and streamline the private markets investment process. iCapital's technology platform and operating system can help Perigon's financial advisors meet their clients' demand for quality private market vehicles and provide access to a diversified range of alternative investments. ↗

Qashqade has welcomed a new partnership with SwissPine Tech, a new IT service provider based in the Philippines. Under this partnership, qashqade seeks to build out its product roadmap, enhance its platform and service its global client base of GPs, LPs and Fund Administrators. ↗

Ontra has partnered with Charlesbank Capital Partners to help close the justice gap in Greater Boston. Together, they are supporting the Volunteer Lawyers Project of the Boston Bar Association to provide pro-bono civil legal services for navigating housing disputes, advocating for vulnerable populations, and helping small businesses thrive. ↗

Acuity Knowledge Partners has achieved Assette Certified Expert Status. Acuity Knowledge Partners is now positioned to help asset management firms create and deliver content to their clients and prospects. With the Assette Certified Expert certification, Acuity Knowledge Partners can now offer an enhanced level of service to their asset management clients. This certification signifies that the team has undergone training and has demonstrated expertise in implementing and optimizing Assette’s solutions. As a result, clients can expect a smoother implementation, onboarding, and adoption process. ↗

Franklin Templeton selected BlackRock's Aladdin to unify its investment management technology. By integrating Aladdin technology, this will enhance the investment lifecycle on a single platform by providing an investment book of record to enable scale, provide insights and support business transformation. This partnership will begin in fiscal 2025 and the transition will be phased over multiple years and will be seamless to clients. ↗

VESTBERRY has a new partnership with Telenet Group to address some of their pain points in investment management. As its newest client, VESTBERRY will provide Telenet Group with the ability to: streamline data collection, manage transaction and Board documentation and reporting to internal stakeholders. Together, VESTBERRY and Telenet Group are leveraging technology to enhance investment operations, strengthen relationships with portfolio companies, and drive value for customers and society. ↗

Private Equity Bay (Pebay) has announced that FUNCEF is its newest client. Pebay will support FUNCEF with its private equity and venture capital information and intelligence solution. ↗

Prequel Ventures is now building on bunch. Bunch is entrusted to power their fund, providing the technological backbone of their fund operations and service to their LPs. Founded in 2022 in Berlin, Prequel Ventures supports pioneering supply chain technology startups across Europe. ↗

OFFICE & PERSONNEL

Michael Lane will join SEI on Sept. 16, 2024 as an Executive Vice President and Head of Asset Management, reporting to CEO Ryan Hicke. In his role as a member of the Executive Management team, Lane will be responsible for the business and growth strategy for the company’s Advisor and Institutional businesses in North America, as well as leading SEI’s investment management teams globally. Lane most recently served as Head of iShares U.S. Wealth Advisory at Blackrock, overseeing revenue growth, client expansion, solution development, implementation, and due diligence across multiple products and asset classes. Prior to joining Blackrock, he held a number of roles at Dimensional Fund Advisors, leading the development of the retirement, broker-dealer, bank, and TAMP businesses. ↗

Harriet Matthews has started a new position as Global Private Funds Editor and Head of Private Equity EMEA at Mergermarket. Matthews will also continue to lead its EMEA private funds coverage. ↗

Robin AI has signed a lease for a new office in Singapore. With this move, Robin AI plans to make Singapore its Asia hub, which is the latest step in its global expansion. ↗

Rania Mounsef has joined Domos FS as an apprentice in Marketing and Communication. ↗

Standard Metrics has welcomed two new team members to the company: Kenny Gilles (engineer) and Carlos I. Lucca (account executive). Gilles joins Standard Metrics from Aalto and Klarna, where he collectively spent 13 years building fintech applications as a full-stack developer. Lucca was previously at companies like Salesforce and Intralinks, where he helped customers make decisions about their software and infrastructure. ↗

G2 has welcomed Sydney Sloan as its new Chief Marketing Officer. Sloan's background is in scaling SaaS businesses, including her recent role at Drata and prior leadership positions at Salesloft, Alfresco, and Adobe. ↗

FundGuard has grown its Boston presence with an expansion of its Dedham office. ↗

Lee Goldenberg has started a new position as Sales Team Lead EMEA at Similarweb. Goldenberg has been with Similarweb since 2019 as a Corporate Account Manager. ↗

Apperio has welcomed back Emily Chou to support the company's continued growth. Chou is now a Senior Associate, Law Firm Operations at Apperio and before that she was an Operations Associate at Indigo Research, which was during her break from working at Apperio previously. ↗

VENDOR RESEARCH & WHITEPAPERS

Grata has a new blog, "The Shortfalls of GenAI in M&A". In this blog, Grata digs into where LLMs can provide value in M&A, where they fall short, and where dealmakers can find better alternatives. ↗

FundGuard has a new article, "Cutting Through Industry Cloud Jargon in Search of Objectivity ". This article explains what differentiates new versus legacy solutions and why that distinction matters to your business. ↗

Holland Mountain has a new blog, "Reporting Automation – The New Benchmark for Best Practice Operations". In this blog, Holland Mountain goes over two ways that GPs are leveraging technology to accomplish reporting goals and three advantages of a data platform in private markets. ↗

Nth Round has a new blog, "Enhancing Organizational Readiness & The Role of Accurate Cap Tables". In this article. Nth Round explores organizational readiness and explains why an accurate cap table can enhance board reporting. ↗

AlphaSense has a new blog, "The Evolution of Expert Networks". In this blog, AlphaSense explores what traditional expert networks are and how industry experts have become more accessible through technological innovations. ↗

KYC3 has a new blog, "3 Signs Your Company Needs To Improve Its Compliance Culture". KYC3 feels that a robust compliance culture is essential for any organization, particularly in industries like finance where the stakes are high. This blog provides three signs that your company may need to improve its compliance culture. ↗

Atfinity has a new article, "Automation vs Intuition: Should Onboarding Be Fully Automated?". This blog takes a closer look at this question and explains what a financial institution stands to gain from automation or intuition. ↗

Daappa has a new blog, "Exploring the Limitations of Spreadsheets in Private Asset Fund Management". In this blog, daappa goes over six reasons why specialized software plays a crucial role in private asset fund management. ↗