When you think of investing money, it’s hard to believe that even well-established asset management firms need expert advice. Asset managers like mutual funds are responsible for growing their client’s wealth through skilled investing. Grow it well, and everyone wins. Lose it, and they might be out of a job.
Despite recent market volatility, clients are flocking to asset management services. The number of clients using investment advisors ballooned to 54.2 million in 2022 and continues to grow. Likewise, investor satisfaction rates are at an all-time high of 81%. The partnership between asset managers and sub-advisors is the main factor driving such high satisfaction rates.
Asset managers allocate client investments in different industries. However, no single firm can have deep expertise across all asset classes and markets. They outsource this by hiring sub-advisory partners with specialized investment expertise in specific asset classes and markets. Sub-advisors manage a portion of an asset manager’s portfolio to ensure they make the right investments, creating an ecosystem of profits. However, finding the ideal sub-advisor match and structuring fair compensation is almost as tricky as predicting the market. That’s where instiHub, a London-based matchmaker, comes in.
InstiHub was the only platform providing detailed profiles on thousands of global sub-advisory firms. These profiles included stats like performance data, investment strategies, and areas of expertise. The platform allowed asset managers to quickly identify and evaluate potential best-fit partners for their needs.
Once asset managers found good partner candidates, instiHub’s data-driven pricing tools helped them determine a fair fee for the sub-advisor based on their historical returns, asset class, investment style, and current market rates. Its innovative service exploded into the market almost immediately and changed how asset managers facilitated partnerships.
InstiHub provided significant value to both parties by streamlining the sub-advisory partnership process. Its pragmatic pricing helped build trust and longstanding relationships between partners. It also helped ensure fair trading while mitigating financial risk.
InstiHub’s success largely came from its data management capabilities. Before it overtook the market, the company started strong with a bold solution to a significant industry issue. As their clientele grew, so did their data–and so did their data management challenges. Although it facilitated quicker partnerships between asset managers and sub-advisors, its sluggish system eliminated much of the time saved.
InstiHub revolutionized the way asset management firms navigated sub-advisory and fund-of-funds partnerships. Rapid growth came with bigger problems to solve. The company faced significant data-related challenges that threatened to undermine its innovative platform. The sheer volume, complexity, and diversity of investment data required to power instiHub’s services were staggering, prompting the need for a robust and specialized solution.
The company centered around two main offerings: sub-advisor scouting and compensation analytics. To deliver these services, instiHub needed to aggregate and analyze vast amounts of data from multiple sources quickly and accurately.
One source was through investment manager profiles. InstiHub collected detailed information on thousands of sub-advisory firms worldwide. This data included their areas of expertise, investment strategies, performance histories, pricing, and track records.
Another source was through market data. The company collected comprehensive datasets spanning various asset classes, sectors, regions, and investment styles. It enabled accurate benchmarking and performance comparisons.
Collecting vast amounts of data with a rapidly growing customer base left the company—and its data—scattered. The platform relied on accurate, up-to-date data to keep investment managers apprised of market trends. After all, its customers were dealing with vast amounts of real money in a high-risk industry. The need for cleaner and more reliable data was critical to instiHub’s and its clients’ credibility. However, integrating data from multiple sources without a functioning data infrastructure led to inconsistencies, errors, and redundancies. Data inefficiencies could compromise the integrity of instiHub’s services and ultimately cause the loss of customers.
Even worse, data management issues took a toll on conversion rates and caused massive sales funnel bottlenecks. InstiHub’s competitive advantage was to provide users with a data-driven pricing tool. This tool enabled asset managers to determine fair compensation for sub-advisors based on various factors. It also ensured that sub-advisors were getting the rates they deserved. The underlying data structure and query mechanisms sometimes led to incorrect and unfair pricing.
Data issues weren’t only a customer issue. While instiHub collected a wealth of data, the company lacked the tools and expertise to transform raw data into actionable insights. The company also lacked robust intelligence capabilities, which could have cost it significant opportunities. The company that aided in asset management found it difficult to manage its own assets. Its disorganized data prevented the company from driving growth and improving offerings by identifying patterns and making data-driven decisions. Drowning in data, the company needed to address these challenges before things could get out of hand.
InstiHub’s greatest offering was matching asset managers with the right market experts. Ironically, it eventually needed an advisor of its own. InstiHub made an investment of its own by partnering with Data-Sleek, an expert advisor of data management.
InstiHub’s data-driven pricing tool was central to its offering but struggled with slow query times. Retrieving and processing data often took several minutes, resulting in a frustrating user experience and a potential loss of customers.
Data-Sleek’s approach to this challenge leveraged a combination of caching mechanisms, dynamic SQL, and advanced data modeling techniques. First, they implemented a caching mechanism that stored the results of frequently executed queries. This reduced the need for repeated data retrieval and processing. It also ensured that subsequent requests for the same data could be served almost instantly, providing users with a lightning-fast experience.
Next, Data-Sleek’s team utilized dynamic SQL in stored procedures to generate queries on the fly. Queries were then cached in a MySQL database that ensured even the most complex and customized requests were executed quickly and without costly database operations.
Caching alone was not enough to address performance bottlenecks. Data-Sleek’s team needed to remodel instiHub’s complex data structure to address the core of its data issues.|
Data-Sleek audited and analyzed the existing system. They identified key areas of inefficiency and redundancy and subsequently restructured the data models to eliminate these bottlenecks. This process involved denormalizing data, creating specialized indexes, optimizing join operations, and several cups of coffee while maintaining data integrity and consistency.
With a tight one-month deadline looming, Data-Sleek’s team worked tirelessly to implement these changes. Expedient work did not mean sacrificing quality. The team conducted rigorous testing and performance benchmarking to ensure the solution met instiHub’s strict requirements.
In the end, their efforts paid off. The new system not only delivered data in less than two seconds but also significantly improved overall platform performance. InstiHub’s once slow performance transformed into a seamless and responsive platform that provided an excellent user experience for its clients.
InstiHub set high expectations when contacting Data-Sleek, but the solution’s results far exceeded their wildest imaginations.
Partnering with Data-Sleek is one of the most lucrative matches instiHub facilitated. Its innovative platform was already a standout in the market, offering a unique solution for asset managers seeking sub-advisory partnerships. However, the solution’s performance enhancements and streamlined user experience catapulted instiHub’s growth to unprecedented levels.
The platform’s data-driven insights and unique matchmaking service transformed the industry-wide investment management and portfolio construction approach. Asset managers could seamlessly access a vast pool of specialized expertise, enabling them to diversify their offerings and truly provide their clients with tailored investment solutions. Meanwhile, the platform democratized sub-advisors’ visibility and opportunities. InstiHub quickly became a catalyst for collaboration and efficient allocation of capital and expertise.
Its growth did not go unnoticed. Making a splash in the market garnered the attention of Wealth Tech giant Allfunds. Recognizing the immense value and potential of instiHub, Allfunds acquired Instihub for an undisclosed amount. This acquisition helped build one of the most powerful leaders in the WealthTech industry.
“I am very pleased that we have entered this agreement that will bring great talent and new insight to Allfunds,” states Juan Alcaraz, Allfunds’ founder and CEO. “This transaction brings exciting possibilities for our data & analytics capacities and will contribute to our ambition to keep leading in the WealthTech space by providing cutting-edge and comprehensive solutions for our clients. Our shared client-centric approach and integrated offering will surely help grow our existing customer base and deliver superior added value to our existing clients.”
For instiHub, the partnership is a dream come true. “I am delighted to have instiHub and my fantastic team join Allfunds,” states Andreas Pfunder, CEO and Founder of instiHub. “Our combined vision and drive for delivering unique, fully actionable, and highly value-added business optimization data analytics to asset managers and distributors worldwide are fully aligned. This joint strength and commitment does not make me doubt that we will fulfill our dream and be the market-leading business knowledge technology partner for the industry.”
The collaboration between instiHub and Data-Sleek demonstrates the power of data-driven solutions and their profound impact on an industry-wide scale. By harnessing the full potential of its data assets and optimizing its platform, instihub redefined the landscape of asset management and maximized its returns on innovation.
For instihub, partnering with Data-Sleek was a match worth millions. Want your own success story? Schedule a consultation today!
Learn more about instiHub (now known as Allfunds)
Data-Sleek® is a consulting agency and a leading provider of comprehensive data management solutions. We specialize in data transformation, data migration, data integration, data architecture, data warehousing, and database consulting. Our commitment to client satisfaction empowers organizations of all sizes to unlock the full potential of their data assets. Data-Sleek is a trusted partner of Fortune 500 companies, dedicated to innovating and revolutionizing the way you do business.
