Communicating with investors

When engaging with our investors we must navigate a complex landscape, balancing transparency, performance communication, and investor expectations. Investor communication faces several challenges due to the unique nature of the private equity industry. These include limited transparency compared to publicly traded markets, managing investor expectations over long investment horizons, and providing meaningful performance updates in a market that does not offer daily updates like liquid markets do.

Managing a diverse investor base, including wealth managers, family offices, and high-net-worth individuals, adds to the complexity. Each group has different expectations and communication preferences.  

Evolving investor expectations from liquid markets

Investors in private equity increasingly expect greater transparency and access to real-time data like they are used to receiving from the liquid side. To meet these evolving expectations, we must adapt and leverage technology to provide relevant, frequent, and personalized information to investors and financial advisors, enhancing their overall experience.  

At ROYC, we have put a tremendous amount of time and effort into breaking down the value chain in increments to identify needs, and create customized notifications in different channels. We want to move away from occasional e-mail updates and sharing files back and forth with our stakeholders for reconciliation. We have, for example, collaborated with depositories and fund administrators to integrate with our platform and agreed upon timely updates regarding capital call transactions. These updates are then transferred into notifications for investors and advisors, aiming to prevent the information vacuum often experienced by private market investors after funding a capital call.

Tools for financial advisors

Our platform effectively caters to the needs of financial advisors. We have gathered input through in-depth interviews and focus groups, allowing us to create functionality tailored to meet their requests. We offer interactive communication with end-users by pushing out notifications (with optional outbound e-mails and SMS), and with the ability to group investors by subsegments. Further, we have also created flexible prompts for new opportunities, quarterly updates, upcoming capital calls/distributions, reporting, e-signatures for subscriptions, and more.

To enhance communication and mirror expectations from liquid markets, we have analyzed the value chain concerning investors and advisors. Collaborating with all stakeholders providing investment information, we have integrated this data into our platform to enhance investor outreach and advisor-investor interaction.

By embracing technological advancements, we can establish stronger connections with investors, foster trust, and ultimately, drive better outcomes for all stakeholders.

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