The Path to Asset Data: Part 1
From Vision to Reality: Transforming Portfolio Visibility with Canoe Asset Data
Over the past few years, we have seen client demand across Canoe’s wealth management and institutional investment client bases for a portfolio company data extraction tool. There is a desire, one shared across all types of alternative investors, to use asset-level data, but various obstacles have prevented this information from being used to its fullest potential—or at all. Some downstream systems don’t process this type of data, and others require users to purchase a bundled technology solution to access it. At firms that are leveraging asset-level data, teams are commonly doing most, if not all, of this work manually today—managing large spreadsheets and workbooks containing this information in order to run exposure reports. Recognizing these obstacles, the Canoe team embarked on a mission to revolutionize the way asset data is collected, processed, and leveraged across different types of investment firms.
The Canoe Asset Data Team:
Meet some of the leaders behind Canoe Asset Data, each bringing a wealth of expertise to the table:
Aman Soni, the visionary leader spearheading the Canoe Data Innovation Hub, serves as the driving force behind the project’s inception and execution. His strategic acumen and unwavering commitment to excellence have propelled Canoe Asset Data from concept to reality in a mere nine months.
Mike Muniz, with a rich background in investment analysis gleaned from his tenure at Cambridge Associates and Novus, brings firsthand experience of the industry’s pain points. His insights into the critical importance of asset-level data underscore the urgency and significance of Canoe’s mission.
Jeff Lin, the architect behind product design and implementation, boasts a stellar track record of zero-to-one product development. His relentless focus on problem-solving and user-centric design principles ensures that Canoe Asset Data meets the evolving needs of its clientele.
Tim Loughrey, drawing from extensive experience in asset management, has navigated the intricacies of portfolio company data within manager research and monitoring. His deep understanding of its value and complexity enriches Canoe Asset Data’s development, ensuring a laser-focused commitment to delivering tangible value for clients.
A Client-Centric Approach: Why Now is the Time for Canoe Asset Data
At the heart of Canoe’s ethos lies a commitment to listening to client feedback and translating it into actionable solutions. From the outset, the team recognized the pressing need for a portfolio company data extraction tool voiced by wealth managers and institutional investors alike. This shared industry sentiment served as the catalyst for the inception of Canoe Asset Data, highlighting the team’s dedication to addressing real-world challenges head-on.
Mike Muniz: There’s a real need for allocators to understand their portfolio in aggregate and how it’s positioned across private and public investments. It’s a huge and acute pain point—highly paid investment research professionals are doing manual work, which is a huge drag on efficiency and effectiveness.
They need that information so they can make better investment decisions on a day-to-day basis. These funds are highly illiquid, so they’re unlikely to have the opportunity to necessarily get out of investments. However, with Canoe Asset Data, they can gain valuable insights for exposure reporting, enabling them to understand their portfolio positioning with precision. Additionally, during investment due diligence, having access to detailed asset-level data allows them to assess risk and opportunities more effectively. Armed with this knowledge, investors can adjust their public portfolio allocations in real time based on how they want to be positioned in aggregate.
When we launched Canoe, we were very much focused on building out tools for a single, manual task that was typically executed in the back office. As our client base has grown, we’ve naturally observed other challenges our clients are facing. This open dialogue we maintain with our clients directly influences our product roadmap and drives innovation at Canoe.
The first such client-led idea drove us to create our document collection product, Canoe Connect. Our clients had to go retrieve these documents from so many different locations, so now we automate that process. As Canoe has continued to evolve, we’re now in a position where we are transforming from a back-office tool to a front-middle-back office solution; we’re an end-to-end workflow automation platform.
A Deeper Dive: The Power of Canoe Asset Data
Thinking about Canoe Asset Data in the context of Canoe’s other products, the idea and the approach are similar to that of Canoe Intelligence. We are getting data out of documents for downstream use. This data, in particular, is holdings information, or data related to the underlying companies or investments of these funds. This data lives within schedules of investments, quarterly financial statements, investment memos, quarterly letters, and other documents.
Canoe Asset Data is designed to help you gain a deeper understanding of what your funds are doing and how they’re positioned. This data is already present in documents that Canoe collects, sorts, and stores, so this new product further empowers our clients with a more granular, transparent view. With Canoe Asset Data, the power to make more informed decisions and drive strategic growth is at your fingertips.
Tim Loughrey: Canoe Asset Data is focused on the extraction of portfolio company data. This not only includes the baseline holdings information like the company’s value, cost, sector, and geography but also goes a level deeper by accessing the underlying financial performance. This enables our clients to make fully informed investment decisions with unparalleled data access.
Aman Kumar Soni: Canoe Asset Data goes deeper into our clients’ existing documents. It’s the first transformational product that we’ve launched since Canoe Connect a few years ago. The focus of Canoe Asset Data is to provide true transparency to our clients, right down to the asset level, to allow them to manipulate that data and understand true exposures.
Mike Muniz: And, our approach to this type of solution is unique because we’re taking a tech-first, document-agnostic route to accessing the data. We create a comprehensive view of all the data related to these underlying holdings across all of the documents in which GPs report, and do it in a fraction of the time that others in the marketplace can. With other providers, you’re typically getting this data several months after quarterly reporting. At Canoe, we make this data available at most five days after reports are distributed.
Collaborative Innovation: Why Canoe Leads in Asset-Level Data Solutions
From ideation to fruition, Canoe Asset Data has been a collaborative project, leveraging the perspectives of our internal subject matter experts and external client advocates. This collaborative approach ensures that Canoe Asset Data reflects genuine market needs, setting us apart as the premier provider of asset-level solutions.
Jeff Lin: Two things. One is that we have experience from working with so many diverse clients to understand their workflows. We’ve come in and reduced the number of actions that they need to take to get the information that they need. The second is that we are experienced in different types of extraction, and we’ve built new technology to extract tables. Our overall focus on extracting documents faster across Canoe enables us to do this for Asset Data as well.
Tim Loughrey: I would echo Jeff in mentioning industry expertise and client partnership. We’ve been working with these client profiles for so long—whether it’s the investment team at a single-family office or the entire department at an asset servicer. Being able to leverage our clients’ input in rolling out Canoe Asset Data and align with their requirements makes this product really interesting.
Aman Kumar Soni: I’d also note our fund master in excess of 37,000 funds. That allows us, over time, to truly leverage shared intelligence. We extract data once, look at the metadata, and, subject to the metadata being the exact same across other investors in the fund (meaning that the GP has issued replica documents to other investors), we can share that data with others. That’s fundamental to what we’re building all across Canoe. Our technology already has a great history in this area, and the amount of documents we’ve accumulated allows us to continue to train our models in the best possible manner. Our priority and focus is on delivering this data with high accuracy, good quality, and in an efficient manner.
With Canoe’s robust shared intelligence, our products have been building on themselves through machine learning and artificial intelligence models. All of the benefits that have already been built into the Canoe Intelligence product are now influencing Canoe Asset Data—the fundamental process has already been built, it’s just now handling a different type of data.
Mike Muniz: While some tech providers focus on gathering a subset of data within the asset data universe, we take a different approach. We strive to provide comprehensive coverage by extracting information from all relevant documents. This ensures that our clients receive a more complete understanding of their portfolio dynamics.
Moreover, Canoe excels in delivering timely insights. Thanks to the scale we’ve achieved with our prior products, we’ve honed our efficiency and can deliver asset data significantly faster than internal processes or outsourced solutions. This efficiency not only saves time but also translates to cost savings and faster investment decisions for our clients.
Learn More About Canoe Asset Data
Canoe Asset Data is an innovative solution to the industry-wide challenge of accessing and using complete, timely, and accurate asset-level data. The solution officially launched in Q1 2024, following the completion of a beta program with 13 client design partners.
This is the first part of our new series “The Path to Asset Data.” Stay tuned for more in this series, as we discuss learnings from our Asset Data Design Partnership, future plans for product enhancements, and highlight client success stories in adopting the look-through data solution the market was missing.
Ready to learn more? Visit https://info.canoeintelligence.com/asset-data