Aman Soni, vice president of data strategy at Canoe Intelligence, winner of the European FundsTech Provider of the Year: Investments award at the Funds Europe Awards 2024, discusses how purpose-built automation solutions empower institutional investors, asset servicers, capital allocators, and wealth managers to unlock greater efficiency and deeper insights.
Read the full report from the 2024 Funds Europe Awards.
Canoe Intelligence focuses on increasing efficiency in alternative investment workflows through advanced automation, tailored to institutional investors, asset servicers, capital allocators, and wealth managers. Established in 2013 within Portage Partners, Canoe quickly became a cornerstone of Portage’s operations, enabling it to operate without dedicated middle or back-office staff. Following a spin-off in 2017 and a market debut in 2018, the firm honed its efforts on providing scalable solutions for complex investment data, with an emphasis on addressing client needs.
Are fund managers in Europe effectively utilising data to drive asset management decisions?
European fund managers are increasingly leveraging data to drive asset management decisions, although challenges remain. Limited partners (LPs) are leveraging data to analyse General partners’ (GP) track record/performance, strategies and returns. Meanwhile, GPs are leveraging data to better understand where they should allocate capital.
However, both LPs and GPs face challenges with data availability and timeliness, particularly in private markets – they are leveraging quarterly data that is typically outdated by a minimum of 3-6 months. Canoe aims to improve this by providing real time data accessibility, standardisation, and accuracy, enabling faster insights and better decision making.
Could you share an example or case study of how data has been effectively used in institutional investment decisions?
A prime example is Canoe Asset Data, a product designed to address clients’ need for exposure reporting and investment due diligence. Extracting, standardising, and delivering asset-level data empowers investors through greater transparency and precision at the asset level. The product also offers a more comprehensive view of exposures and allows investors to manage their portfolios holistically (alongside public market investments), optimise investment strategies, and achieve operational excellence. It ultimately allows investors to make investment decisions with more clarity and confidence. Adopters of Canoe Asset Data have reported significant improvement in data accuracy, with feedback indicating accuracy levels exceeding 99%.
“Both LPs and GPs face challenges with data availability and timeliness, particularly in private markets – they are leveraging quarterly data that is typically outdated by a minimum of 3-6 months.”
How is cloud-based, machine learning technology transforming the landscape of alternative investments?
Cloud based machine learning technology is revolutionising alternative investments. Historically, manual document data extraction has been time-consuming, prone to human error, and limited in scope. The shift toward machine learning, and the expansion of large language models (LLMs), has enabled more sophisticated data extraction methods. Investors can now process documents faster and more accurately, extract a wider range of data points and gain deeper insights. At Canoe, we have a wealth of data on which to train our proprietary LLM models – comprising over 42,000 investment funds, the largest fund universe in the industry. This underpins our efforts to meet client needs for access to timely, accurate data, in a single consolidated view.
Finally, what makes your firm stand out?
What sets Canoe apart is its unique combination of proprietary machine learning technology, shared intelligence, and a cloud-based platform. Canoe’s proprietary ML technology ensures highly accurate, timely, and complete data extraction, with a strong emphasis on data quality and transparency. Clients benefit from clear data lineage and auditability, which are critical for trust and compliance.
Another key differentiator is Canoe’s shared intelligence, which leverages the contributions of its 375 clients to create reliable learning patterns. Each new fund document introduced into the platform enhances data mapping, speeds up onboarding, and improves data extraction accuracy, fostering a more connected industry.
Additionally, Canoe’s cloud-based platform digitises manual processes related to data storage and makes data seamlessly accessible to clients’ reporting systems of choice. This integration with upstream and downstream systems ensures efficient and effective workflows for clients.
