With the world facing global economic uncertainty, social distancing measures in place and unprecedented travel restrictions, financial institutions that rely on connecting their clients with investment opportunities through traditional methods are facing a harsh reality: adapt your business strategy, or face several challenging months (or possibly longer) ahead.
This was the challenge facing 4CoInvest, the new private equity deal platform that has been borne out of a partnership between Swiss-based multi-family office Agenda Invest and Emergy, an investment house operating from Luxembourg. In joining forces, the two institutions wanted to create an exclusive digital investment platform for family offices seeking origination and investment in private equity, private debt and alternative assets.
The project is spearheaded by Pierluigi Ciccone, formerly of UBS, and Yves Speeckaert, a former Director of KPMG Consulting in Brazil. Utilising the latest private markets technology, 4CoInvest will offer family offices access to the digital infrastructure, processes and tools to enhance their private asset investments based on a rigorous selection process and digitalised asset analysis.
Delivering personalised service on a worldwide scale
Servicing a client base of ultra-high net worth families and investors across the world, 4CoInvest has been exploring ways in which it can modernise the distribution of investment opportunities in a more effective and efficient way. Pierluigi Ciccone, Partner and CEO of 4CoInvest, said that meeting the changing needs of clients without compromising on personal engagement was key to their decision.
“With a global client base across several continents, it is no longer practical for us to conduct every meeting face to face. Our team would often find themselves flying from Europe to South America to North America and back to Europe in a very short period of time in order to conduct client meetings. While this approach delivered a hugely personalised client experience, it often meant that we weren’t able to support our clients in other ways because it was such a resource-heavy approach.”
“For example, as many of our investors operate across multiple time zones, they would often want to access information about investment opportunities at times when our team would not be available. We also wanted to be able to share information on new investment opportunities more proactively, rather than waiting to discuss these at our next scheduled meeting or call.”
Digitising private investments
To overcome these challenges, 4CoInvest have embraced the role that technology can play in enabling a personalised client experience. They are partnering with Delio, a specialist developer of technology that digitises all aspects of the private market investment lifecycle. By implementing Delio’s white-labelled technology, 4CoInvest will be able to offer their clients 24/7 digital access to new investment opportunities, the ability to manage any transactions online, as well as access to a suite of analytics and reporting tools so that they can monitor their portfolio performance at the click of a button.
Ciccone feels that the partnership is a symbolic representation of how financial institutions need to adapt and is particularly pertinent given the devastating worldwide impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. “While our project with Delio has been several months in the pipeline, the technology’s ability to support the transformation of our business model could not be more valuable in light of recent developments. With many of our clients based in some of the world’s worst-affected countries, it has become even more important for us to embrace new and innovative ways of supporting them at a time of huge economic uncertainty.”
