As institutional asset managers accelerate their allocations into private markets, they often find themselves facing an alien landscape when it comes to data.
Used to the data-driven systems that power public capital markets, investors in private markets, including private equity and private credit as well as alternatives such as property, must contend with greater opacity, disparate data sources, a greater reliance on unstructured data and a lack of standardisation.This unique set of characteristics means asset managers need to go that extra step to integrate their private and public portfolios to avoid operational inefficiencies, data gaps and blind spots.
To tackle a subject of growing importance, A-Team LIVE will gather a panel of experts for its October 15 webinar entitled “Unlocking Transparency in Private Markets: Data-Driven Strategies in Asset Management”.
The webinar will comprise panellists Rupert Davies, Fractional ESG Director at ESG Sum and Nicholas Wood, Enterprise Data Management Product Manager at Rimes. Data Management Insight editorial contributor Joy Macknight will moderate the discussion.
Solutions Available
Rimes’ Wood said that solutions to the private markets data challenge exist and that asset managers must grasp them early.
“As data-driven strategies that integrate both private and public sources become increasingly prevalent, adopting modern tech stacks and machine learning approaches to automatically extract reports and effectively master unstructured data will be essential to delivering accurate, actionable insights,” he told Data Management Insight.
The peculiar characteristics of private markets and the portfolio companies that underly private equity funds make it difficult for asset managers to obtain the same kind of insights as they can from public capital markets. The portfolio companies often aren’t used to disclosing company data and many of the general partners (GPs) who manage funds for the limited partners (LPs), which provide much of the investment capital, are only just getting a grasp on the data imperative.
New Products
As a result, many data and technology providers have created services and products to bring the sort of transparency to private markets that investors are used to in public markets. They are seeking to fill an information gap within a sector that Preqin estimates will account for almost US$25 trillion of invested capital by 2028.
Many are using artificial intelligence such as generative AI and machine learning to prise insights from the PDF-format reports that make up the lion share of private markets documents.
Another issue that asset managers must contend with the is the multitude of entity and security identifiers that can make integration of disparate data sets a challenge. CUSIPs are the latest set of identifiers to be applied, along with those of the Global Legal Entity Identifiers Foundation and Dun and Bradstreet’s DUNS numbering system.
And a recent A-Team LIVE webinar heard that total portfolio views within investment management platforms are becoming critical among diversifying asset managers who recognise that having a holistic view enables organisations to unlock the greatest value from their data.
- A-Team LIVE’s Unlocking Transparency in Private Markets: Data-Driven Strategies in Asset Management webinar will be held on October 15 at 10:00am ET; 3:00pm London; and 4:00pm CET. Click here to register your attendance.
Subscribe to our newsletter
