How Modern Administration enhances investor relationships

Investment management is a relationship-centric business. Investors like being able to talk to their GP. They value their GP’s ability to explain their investment performance. The personal matters.

But technology is revolutionizing the investor relationship. Digital tools are enabling GPs to better communicate with investors, share critical information to maintain investors’ trust, and use data to target and reach out to the right investors. Good technology doesn’t replace relationships. It enhances them.

Your administrator should do the same.

An administrator should be an ally. Through our work with more than 1,300 GPs, we’ve developed a deep understanding of what investors expect and what’s needed to optimize those relationships.

Investors today expect an intuitive, secure, and visually appealing experience when managing their investments. And these expectations will only increase. GPs who step up to meet this demand will foster deeper relationships with their investors. Whether you manage funds or invest deal by deal, you—and your investors—need an administrator who has the experience to anticipate and respond to changing investor demands and the technology to actively strengthen investor relationships now and in the future.

How can you provide a good investor experience?

Paper and manual processes are expensive—not only in direct costs, but also in possible opportunities lost. What is your team not doing because they’re shuffling paper? Often what gets lost is proactive communication. If your team is spending time creating reports, chasing signatures, or entering data, that’s time spent not thinking ahead about what your investors need or initiating conversations that can make a difference.

Working with a modern administrator that offers technology that automates tasks, moves data seamlessly between systems, and sends out required paperwork can make you look smarter and more in tune with your investors.

“When we were looking for an administrator, it came down to one question,” says John Falkner, Principal and Co-Founder at FSO Capital Partner. “Will they give our team more time to spend with our investors? We looked at some of Juniper Square’s competitors, but none of them offered what we needed—investor-focused administration backed by technology.

A good investor experience means you’re there when your investors need you. For many clients, that means face-to-face meetings or phone calls. But that’s changing. COVID-19 shifted expectations, and more than ever, clients see value in other forms of outreach.

Juniper Square’s administrators use digital tools that give your investors options in how they interact with you, like a well-designed investor portal that can make it seem like you are sitting shoulder to shoulder with an investor, even when you’re thousands of miles away. Your less tech savvy clients may still prefer in-person meetings, but the next generation of investors—who will be increasingly important for firm growth—expect easy-to-use digital solutions that allow them to interact with you, any time and from anywhere.

Investors have more options than ever and you will need to meet them where they’re at to maintain your competitive edge. Now’s the time to think about working with trusted partners that offer access to tools that will improve how you’ll engage with your existing customers and the next generation of investors.

Working with an administrator that offers tools that digitize key interactions like client onboarding means once labor-intensive tasks can become a way to delight clients, while simultaneously requiring much less handholding from your team.

An intuitive, secure, and visually appealing investor portal can also help bolster the value you bring to investors. It gives clients a chance to see their accounts; safely access information, disclosures, and reports; and complete simple subscription- or account-related tasks. And because you can brand your portal with your logo, colors, and customized messages, the portal reinforces your investors’ relationship with your firm, helping them stay connected and see the value your firm delivers.

The stakes to nail every interaction with your existing and prospective investors is at an all-time high. A 2020 survey found that 84% of Americans favor personalized content from their investment managers.

How can you make sure to reach the right investors with the right messaging? Using CRM and portal data allows you to tailor content to specific investors to better demonstrate the value of your investment strategy.

To further inform and optimize your investor communications, look for an administrator that offers business intelligence tools that can help you learn what investors are responding to and what’s not gaining traction. A good administrator should be able to help you manage investor data and turn insights into action.

These technologies create a lot of data, but what all those numbers are really about is building relationships. The data is an opportunity to learn about the people who are interested in your firm and to find ways to draw them closer. That might mean creating videos that show a firm’s personality or sending personalized messages that address their specific concerns. Or it might mean picking up the phone and continuing a conversation that began online. The key is to make the technology work for the relationship. Use the tools to do what you do best—connect with your investors.

“Don’t be afraid to switch to an administrator that really understands the importance of the GP-LP relationship,” says Mary Heidorn, Manager of Investor Relations at CREC. “It will make your life easier and the investor experience better.”

Investing in investors pays off. It not only sets you apart from your competitors, but respondents to our recent investment operations and administration survey reported that it prompts more repeat business (86%), more referrals (83%), more—and larger—investment commitments (62%), more time to spend on high-value activities (55%), and more productive customer relationships (44%).

Every touchpoint you have with an investor is an opportunity to advance the relationship—or set it back. That’s why it’s key to choose an administrator that invests in your success—and the success of your investors. Opt for an administrator that can not only take on reporting and other administrative tasks, but also offers digital solutions that can improve operations, data transparency, security, and the user experience for both employees and investors.

Juniper Square’s modern administration solutions offer deep expertise and industry-leading digital solutions that can help you deliver exceptional investor experience with less effort. And we can help you navigate ever-evolving industry regulations and reinforce your firm’s strengths so you can stay a step ahead of changes in the market, provide a good investor experience, and keep impressing your investors.

Contact us to find out how Juniper Square's modern administration solutions can help serve your investors better.