Challenge
Enhancing portfolio analysis
Rincon Advisors, a private investment firm, serves a select number of portfolio owners and their affiliated entities. Dedicated to providing responsive service, the firm spent significant energy and time quickly fulfilling reporting and analysis requests that superseded its legacy investment technology. Bringing data together from various sources and manually entering it into spreadsheets often took days.
As a wealth management industry veteran, Rincon Chief Investment Officer and President John O’Connor recognized the problem all too well. “It’s simplistic to say that analysis of complex portfolios is difficult or inefficient,” he explains. “You can hire small armies of analysts to make it happen, but it takes time, especially when alternative assets are involved. Knowing that there are constraints on the process and the timeliness of the results, many portfolio owners limit the number of questions they ask. We wanted to empower the people we serve with fast answers to a virtually unlimited number of questions.”
Solution
Ability to ask more questions and gain deeper answers
John O’Connor"Addepar offers a level of transparency that’s hard to achieve without a huge back office. It offers immediacy and efficiency that’s otherwise impossible. That’s enabling us to offer dramatically better service to our clients."
O’Connor discovered Addepar and quickly realized the platform’s potential to benefit private investment firms like Rincon. Using Addepar, O’Connor and his team can readily aggregate data from all asset classes and conduct analysis that accounted for complex ownership structures. The degree of customization provided by the technology also impressed the Rincon team. “Addepar allows you and portfolio owners to ask questions without having to account for how long it will take to assemble the data,” O’Connor says. “For instance, our key portfolio holder can now easily review bond maturity dates as frequently as he wants. That’s the kind of thing we might have reviewed quarterly in the past.”
John O’Connor"It’s very flexible. We define the metrics and reports we want to share."
Rincon can also share its reporting with clients through Addepar’s secure web portal. Highly customizable, the portal allows the firm to cater to the needs and preferences of individual users. Multi-generational support also helps the firm deliver in-depth information about all client assets. “Addepar lets you deliver different views based on permissions,” says O’Connor. “It’s very flexible. We define the metrics and reports we want to share. If a portfolio owner has a question that’s not covered by our report templates, we can easily customize a new one. The individuals we serve are now asking questions that they might have avoided in the past because the analysis was so time-consuming.”
Result
Accuracy and efficiency without an army of analysts
John O’Connor"As we look to grow the number of people and portfolios we work with, Addepar is furthering our efforts."
Rincon is expanding the number of individuals it serves without inflating its staff, and Addepar is helping. “As we look to grow the number of people and portfolios we work with, Addepar is furthering our efforts,” O’Connor says.
O’Connor says that Addepar allows his firm to grow at a controlled pace while still delivering customized, in-depth solutions for clients. “Addepar delivers agility without having to maintain an army of analysts or IT specialists,” he says. “There are many advantages to having a small investment office, but being able to maintain a large IT department isn’t one of them. Addepar levels the field and give us best-in-class portfolio management tools without the high maintenance overhead. It’s the fastest, most efficient path to analyzing complex portfolios I’ve experienced.”