Investology: Investment Management Intelligence
00:03:53 · Andrea Carnelli Dompé, Andrea Carnelli Dompé, George Aliferis
[00:03:53] S1: And by that, I mean they have very sizable allocation as a percentage of market markets. [00:03:59] S0: they tend to write very large tickets. They do that directly with direct commitments to profit market funds. They might have been in the asset class for decades as well, and therefore have built very strong relationships with leading GPs, and in some cases have also started doing secondaries or co-investments, just like any institutional investor might have. So I think family offices tend to be very institutionalized. The retail end is more... you know, [00:04:29] S1: ultra high net worth individuals that might purchase private market products [00:04:34] S0: through their banks, through their wealth managers. [00:04:36] S1: So you bank with Bank X and Bank X would probably sell you a feeder to invest in [00:04:41] S0: private markets, but it's all very much intermediated by the bank, all the way from reporting to the capital calls. [00:04:49] S1: And it tends to be a very small portion of the universe that is being offered [00:04:53] S0: to these high net worth individuals. That's what I kind of think more of as being retail. [00:05:00] S1: So we understand that lines can be blurred and that an LP may also one day [00:05:05] S2: participate in a Finder fund, [00:05:06] S1: but there's still a change between being an LP and I think that someone or an organization like leans in more and is a lot more active than being just a high net worth investor who has been advised by his financial advisor to put some money in.
00:05:06 · Andrea Carnelli Dompé, George Aliferis, Andrea Carnelli Dompé
[00:05:06] S1: but there's still a change between being an LP and I think that someone or an organization like leans in more and is a lot more active than being just a high net worth investor who has been advised by his financial advisor to put some money in. [00:05:24] S2: into a perpetual or feeder fund. [00:05:26] S1: Can we now discuss about the operational issues they face and how do you help them [00:05:31] S2: solve that with Tamarix? [00:05:33] S0: I think ultimately an LP has to do certain mission-critical activities, that is accounting, reporting, monitoring, making sure the GPs are doing their job, portfolio construction, [00:05:47] S1: So making sure you are managing the commitments in a way that manages your risk of [00:05:52] S0: liquidity and also achieves your portfolio construction goals. [00:05:56] S1: So all these things can be done if you have data from your underlying managers that [00:06:03] S0: is correctly collected, normalized, and processed. And this is where Tamarix comes in. [00:06:09] S1: We basically automate everything that has to do with data and workloads so that our [00:06:15] S0: clients can focus on the actually interesting side of investing in global markets. [00:06:21] S2: So how does it work in practice? Let's say I've invested in different funds from different providers, different strategies, how I get information from the vendors, what type of information do I get in what format and how do I process it? [00:06:36] S0: So suppose you have made 20 fund investments.
00:06:36 · Andrea Carnelli Dompé, Andrea Carnelli Dompé
[00:06:36] S0: So suppose you have made 20 fund investments. [00:06:39] S1: Every manager will have their own reports being shared through their own channels. So effectively what happens after making those investments is that every day you [00:06:47] S0: open your mailbox and you see a bunch of notifications. some capital posts, some capital distributions, a new capital account statement, a new quarter report, a new K1. You have loads of documents being sent. Now, these documents hit your mailbox as a notification, but not necessarily do you find those documents as an attachment. [00:07:06] S1: So you typically then have to somehow recover the logins to the manager's portal, [00:07:12] S0: log into the portal, do the MFA, get the code on the phone, retrieve the document. And that's only to get the document itself. And yes, that document is a PDF. And that PDF will always be following different templates. Everybody reports differently. So you will download that PDF, look at it, and work out what kind of information you need to extract. Oh, is it a capital call? So I need to make sure I understand how much to wire by when. Oh, is it a capital account statement? [00:07:40] S1: Let me take the NFV and shoot it to my reporting system so I can value the funds at [00:07:44] S0: the end of the month.
00:07:44 · Andrea Carnelli Dompé, Andrea Carnelli Dompé, George Aliferis
[00:07:44] S0: the end of the month. [00:07:45] S1: oh it's a quarterly report okay so let me actually capture the data about the underlying company so i understand how this fund is building up exposures and risk all of that process is typically very manual and the outcome of that process is after you have checked down the notification document you have extracted the data [00:08:06] S0: you know, [00:08:07] S1: put it on to a sort of standardized format is to actually then do everything you [00:08:11] S0: need to do afterwards. [00:08:12] S1: The monitoring, the reporting, all of those processes I was talking about before. [00:08:17] S0: And that's usually done manually and on Excel. [00:08:19] S2: So at this stage, we haven't yet spoken about doing any due diligence, performing analysis, applying some judgment. [00:08:27] S1: We're just talking about inputting in the system, but then the interesting part comes, right? [00:08:34] S0: Correct. Correct. Then you will need to do the performance calculations, make sure the data is structured in a way that is accessible, run forecasting of it. You know, that's where all the fun starts. [00:08:46] S2: And that's not finished, right? You probably also need to report your investors, deliver reports for the compliance, all of that and more. [00:08:55] S0: Correct. That's the mix. That's the mix. And it's all about, it all starts with data. So that's the core of what we focus on. [00:09:02] S2: So what is the traditional approach to that? How have helpies dealt with it so far before the introduction of Tamarix?
00:09:02 · George Aliferis, Andrea Carnelli Dompé, Andrea Carnelli Dompé
[00:09:02] S2: So what is the traditional approach to that? How have helpies dealt with it so far before the introduction of Tamarix? [00:09:10] S0: Yeah, in most cases, it's manpower. The issue is that the data is so unstructured that until recently, it was just very hard to handle automatically. So it was manpower being thrown at a problem. As the industry has evolved, people started saying, okay, [00:09:24] S1: but let me just stick that data into a SaaS solution that allows me at least to [00:09:28] S0: query it afterwards in an efficient way. [00:09:31] S1: So then you had the next wave of evolution that was manpower feeding SAS software. [00:09:37] S0: Now, thanks to AI agents, we are trying to automate also the manpower part feeding into the system. [00:09:44] S1: So we've only spoken about the problem without speaking about the solution so far. Can you tell us where does Tamarix intervene and is it as early as this phase of [00:09:55] S2: ingestion of data? And then how far do you go in the process? [00:09:59] S0: We can support any kind of intervention in the value chain, but typically people will have preferences as to where we intervene. [00:10:06] S1: In the broadest sense, we can intervene already at the notification receipt level. [00:10:12] S0: So we can track notifications, recover the documents, extract the data, normalize it, [00:10:18] S1: and make it available on a software that also generates all the downstream
00:10:18 · Andrea Carnelli Dompé, Andrea Carnelli Dompé, George Aliferis
[00:10:18] S1: and make it available on a software that also generates all the downstream [00:10:22] S0: analytics. All of that we can support. Some people will open the menu and say, actually, I just need you here. Yeah, we can support that end-to-end. [00:10:29] S2: And in practical terms, how do you insert yourself in this structure, in this process of communication between GPs and LPs? [00:10:39] S0: Well, the source of information is GP portals. [00:10:44] S1: And GP portals tend to run on a few systems that are quite common across the industry. [00:10:50] S0: But there's loads of exceptions. [00:10:53] S1: And those systems are not necessarily known for being very tech-friendly or open to [00:10:58] S0: third-party systems. So unfortunately, it's a wide range of techniques from having simulated logins to automated [00:11:10] S1: attachment extractions in the case of the notifications or sending the documents as [00:11:14] S0: attachments. [00:11:15] S1: There's loads of different strategies that are very specific to the GP portions. [00:11:20] S2: And how do I implement this as an LP? [00:11:22] S1: What is the first step in order to move from my traditional approach to your AI [00:11:28] S2: agent-driven approach? [00:11:30] S0: Typically, when somebody uses us for the end-to-end portfolio monitoring approach, [00:11:35] S1: it would all start by authorizing us to receive documents from GPs on their behalf. [00:11:42] S0: So that's step number one. [00:11:43] S1: Step number two would be tell us what you have so we can map out your portfolio.