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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.