iCapital seals deal to scoop up AltExchange

iCapital seals deal to scoop up AltExchange
Lawrence Calcano, chairman and CEO of iCapital and Kareem Hamady, CEO of AltExchange.
The alts-focused wealth tech giant is looking to ramp up its data management capabilities with an AI-driven solution courtesy of its latest strategic acquisition.
OCT 30, 2024

iCapital, a global fintech platform specializing in alternative investments, is looking to enhance its support for financial advisors and asset managers as it plans to acquire an AI-driven data and reporting platform provider.

On Wednesday, the fintech giant revealed it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire AltExchange, which it says will enhance its data management capabilities, effectively streamlining post-investment processes and improving decision-making across private markets.

The deal announcement comes immediately after the firm revealed a new partnership with GeoWealth, a proprietary TAMP provider with a focus on the RIA space, under which iCapital would bring BlackRock's custom models integrating private markets, direct indexing, and fixed income SMAs along with traditional ETF and mutual funds onto its platform.

Lawrence Calcano, chairman and CEO of iCapital, emphasized how its newest partnership with AltExchange can help clients collect, extract, and organize their data more efficiently.

“AltExchange has developed one of the most advanced document retrieval solutions that’s connected to sophisticated mapping, routing technology and LLM-based document extraction,” Calcano said in a statement shared with InvestmentNews.

“This acquisition complements the investments we are making in our internal R&D to further enhance our data management capabilities," he said. "Combined with our existing solutions, it allows us to deliver on our goal of creating reliable end-to-end data management services for all our clients.”

AltExchange’s technology focuses on assembling and converting unstructured data from various sources into structured insights, supporting real-time reporting and improving tax workflows. Its AdvisorVue platform, designed for financial advisors, aggregates client portfolios, standardizes data, and automates reporting. Meanwhile, AltExchange’s Digital Custodian Platform enables asset managers to standardize post-investment reporting data, automate investor reporting and integrate data with advisors’ systems.

Reporting solutions are a top area of focus for firms looking to compete in the high-net-worth space, according to a March report by Cerulli. As adoption of bespoke investment solutions and exposure to the private markets continues to grow, Cerulli argued there's a growing need for intermediaries to construct strong technical infrastructure to support account aggregation and performance reporting.

"[H]aving a more sophisticated performance reporting environment can significantly lessen the barriers to adopting a higher allocation to alternative investments—a top priority across HNW intermediary and asset manager spaces," the report said, noting that 98 percent of the HNW practices it surveyed offered consolidated performance reporting as a service.

“We built an intuitive advisor-facing platform to manage, monitor, and report on alternative investments, offering comprehensive tools for document management, advanced alerts, and streamlined tax workflows,” said Kareem Hamady, CEO of AltExchange, who will join iCapital after the acquisition. “We are thrilled to join iCapital and offer our collective clients automated data aggregation, reporting, and direct integrations with leading asset and wealth management systems.”

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