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Alternative Investments Platform Acquires Onboarding Solutions Firm

Editorial Staff 20 January 2025

Alternative Investments Platform Acquires Onboarding Solutions Firm

Giving its rationale for the deal, iCapital says there's a pressing need to make onboarding less painful and laborious.

iCapital, the New York-based platform for alternative investments, has agreed to acquire Parallel Markets, which provides an investor onboarding, verification and monitoring solution. 

The purchase price wasn’t disclosed by iCapital in its statement late last week. 

The agreement comes as iCapital says it is estimated that $2.5 billion is spent globally on identity verification services and compliance across the financial services industry.

"Onboarding and verifying digital investor identity and compliance is a major friction point in private markets investing,” Lawrence Calcano, chairman and CEO of iCapital, said. “Parallel Markets has pioneered software that supports a reusable investor passport, streamlining these duplicative processes for advisors, investors, and fund managers. As we continue to evolve our tech stack, we will enhance automated entry for alternative investing and leverage AI and machine learning to offer a complete, intuitive end-to-end solution. This is expected to result in faster onboarding, reduced costs, and a more efficient investment process.”

The new iCapital Investor Passport will offer a turnkey onboarding solution for all fund investors, both institutional and wealth management, creating a universal reusable investor identity that can be used across iCapital Marketplace and the suite of offerings on iCapital's platform for global alternative asset managers, iCapital said.

This digital identity will function as a “data locker” for storing, managing, and sharing personal information needed for fund subscription and compliance verification in private markets.

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