Fund managers know that a successful investor onboarding process relies on effective communication and collaboration among the different teams internally, and externally with investors.

But did you know that according to McKinsey, well-connected teams can also be up to 25% more productive?

Communication is obviously vital when it comes to connectivity, collaboration, and efficiency. Let's discuss the key communication flows that directly shape the investor onboarding experience.

Key communication flows

There are a series of touchpoints and operations that separate a smooth onboarding process for all parties from a downright tedious, unpleasant one.  

Getting investors started

Right off the bat, you can increase investor engagement and maximize follow-through on verbal commitments by providing multiple paths to start their subscription.

Options include leveraging emails from your onboarding system, a more personalized touch from your CRM or email provider with a specific link, or even using messaging apps. Your onboarding solution should be intelligent enough that the initiation can be done via multiple methods to appeal to those different investor preferences and still track all potential investors.

Being able to track early responses and then easily follow up with reminders to investors will go a long way to help you close on time and provide sufficient buffer time to handle unexpected events. 

Providing live guidance and support

As investors onboard, they may have questions while completing their subscription documents. It's important to be able to receive these questions early, be notified promptly, and answer quickly while investors are engaged to decrease the risk that they’ll drop off. This drop-off period could be for a few hours, days, or weeks, but can result in delays and sometimes may even last permanently if investors decide to forego subscribing altogether.

With the right onboarding solution, teams across a fund can be immediately informed when questions arise. Then the team can decide who can respond right then or can begin gathering the necessary information.

Notifications can also be provided beyond the fund manager to fund counsel and fund administrators, so they can be directly involved as needed. Timing and access are crucial factors in achieving a high level of responsiveness.

Coordinating the review process across multiple parties

Regardless of the size of your fund, the review process is typically the biggest undertaking.

Each investor’s subscription documents will need to be reviewed by a variety of individuals, with some individuals reviewing them multiple times.

Funds with fewer investors can use a smaller core team to handle the review process. While assignment might be less complicated, manually tracking progress across dozens of investors can be very wasteful of their limited resources.

On the other hand, large funds often benefit from the support of their counsel and administrators, but these stakeholders make coordinating reviews among multiple teams more challenging. This complexity is amplified even further when multiple administrators are used across different jurisdictions.

Coordinating and routing each investor to the appropriate reviewer at the opportune time could become a full-time job when technology isn’t used. 

Handling remediation

Despite the usual precautions taken, mistakes are often made during subscriptions. Whether it's in the representation made by the investor, the documentation provided for AML/KYC, or different jurisdiction-specific documents, the room left to interpretation typically leads to inaccuracies. 

Correcting these mistakes often results in lengthy back-and-forth emails or phone calls between combinations of the fund counsel, the fund administrator, the fund manager, and the investor. On top of that, handling this communication via email or calls lacks transparency for all.

Finding a collaborative way to proactively support investors while maintaining clarity for all stakeholders is the biggest lever of the onboarding process to speed closing and provide investors with the best experience.

How to enhance communication

At Anduin, we’ve found that communications flows can be greatly enhanced when the following processes and supporting technologies are in place:

1. Workflows
   Customizable multi-step review workflows help with automating assignments and routing communications. These workflows are flexible to be set up in any way that works best for the team and reduces the need for a dedicated coordinator, who can ultimately become a bottleneck.
   
   
2. Transparency
   People like seeing progress. Transparency can be maintained throughout onboarding collaboration without additional cost, manual reporting, or frequent check-ins if the information is captured and shared as it happens. Automated workflow communications and dashboards can help seamlessly share this information.
   
   
3. Live Data
   With the right platform, stakeholders can access and find the information they need to know where things stand at any given point in time. Advanced dashboards are available so each stakeholder can personalize their own view and focus on what matters to them.  

These are just a few of the enhancements to keeping communication flowing. For more ideas tailored to your investor onboarding needs, contact our team.

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