The outlook for private markets fundraising over the next year may be challenging, but the adoption of purpose-built, firm-wide software solutions can help GPs instil investor confidence and provide impeccable investor servicing, says Jessie Juan (pictured), founder and partner at data management specialist Quantium Technology.
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The outlook for private markets fundraising over the next year may be challenging, but the adoption of purpose-built, firm-wide software solutions can help GPs instil investor confidence and provide impeccable investor servicing, says Jessie Juan, founder and partner at data management specialist Quantium Technology.
Can you outline the industry trends which have been driving growth and development within your firm over the past year?
We see growing trends of GPs collaborating on purpose-built, all-in-one solutions to connect their operations across portfolio management, fund reporting and investor relations, specifically:
- GPs are putting in place practices around portfolio data standardization and reporting. Leveraging a robust portfolio management solution can streamline the data collection and validation process, while providing risk management as well as report (i.e. quarterly report and portfolio one-pager) automation.
- GPs are digitalizing fund administrator’s data for better control and timely access to critical performance statistics. A purpose-built solution can help easily ingest external fund administrator’s data, while providing insightful aggregated cross-fund statistics for a management bird’s-eye view.
- GPs are on the lookout for the next generation investor portal which goes beyond secure document sharing. At Quantium, we go beyond file sharing to provide single fund and cross-fund performance dashboards from institutional investors’ lens and allow GPs to better service and engage their investors from a relationship-level perspective.
What are the primary challenges your firm and your clients are facing and what is critical to these being overcome?
The main challenge our clients try to address is the lack of big picture thinking when it comes to optimizing their firm-wide operations. Each department (finance, portfolio, Investor Relations, IT etc) chooses a specialized software or a third-party vendor to solve its problems. However, the complexity of private markets operations means that linking data across these disparate tools is an impossible task – so each department continues to operate in siloes. This means hours of extracting data manually from different sources, then using it to conduct complex calculations which inevitably result in errors. This approach is extremely inefficient and totally unsustainable.
Private markets firms need to look for modern, purpose-built, all-in-one systems (rather than point solutions) that can tackle each department’s needs while seamlessly connecting portfolio, fund and investor data as the ultimate in investor reporting.
How can you best ensure you deliver value-add to your client base?
Quantium’s combination of specialized knowledge delivered through cutting-edge tools and services is what makes our software truly valuable to our client base. We have an exceptionally experienced team with private markets operational backgrounds, which allows us to provide advice and recommendations to our clients on what their investors need from them.
An example of this in action is SmartPage, our business intelligence tool that streamlines investor reporting. Rather than charging our clients hefty customization fees to produce hard-coded reports, we provide a library of gold-standard templates based on industry best practice, allowing users to download or build unlimited reports with real-time data at no extra cost.
What is your outlook for the private equity space for the coming year and how is your firm best placed to support clients navigate the environment?
We foresee a bumpy ride ahead for 2023. With LPs being more selective with their deployments, GPs need to up the ante in order to instil investor confidence – which means they need to deliver impeccable investor servicing as a key to a long-standing and healthy investor relationship.
Selecting a specialized software solution can help take investor servicing to new heights. Quantium’s data granularity enables our clients to focus on relationship-level discussions – e.g., through investor group summary, which provides personalized data for a particular investor rather than broad strokes – or to demonstrate a strong track record through detailed portfolio analytics. This allows GPs to paint a clear picture of their track record and positioning in the competitive market for their investors in a difficult period for fundraising.
Could any shift or change influence the potential growth of the industry?
We believe that artificial intelligence will have a significant impact in all industries, including private markets. At Quantium, we recognize the tremendous potential of AI to optimize workflows, improve our products, and ultimately transform how our clients conduct investment operations.
From leveraging AI tools like GitHub co-pilot and Chat-GPT to implementing AI-driven data ingestion processes, we’re actively deploying practical AI solutions to drive innovation and improve outcomes. Quantium’s commitment to staying at the forefront of this transformative development reflects our belief in the role that AI will play in shaping the future of our industry.
Jessie Juan, co-founder and partner, Quantium Technology – Jessie is co-founder and partner at Quantium, a next generation fund and portfolio management software firm. Her career spans more than 12 years of alternative investment experience across Asia and Europe, with a focus on private equity integrated investing in Greater China. Through her extensive LP experience, she brings best practice knowledge of investors reporting as well as Investor Relations services to the Quantium team. Previously, Jessie was Investment Committee member for Partners Group’s Asia Pacific & Emerging Markets Primary Investments, managing circa USD 1bn in capital deployment across primary, secondary and direct investments. She was also the Advisory Board member for multiple leading partnerships where she led the due diligence, legal negotiations, and post-investment account management. Jessie holds a BS degree from the Leonard Stern School of Business from New York University.
