The more I think about due diligence, the more flawed I realise it is.

Not because the act of due diligence itself is a bad idea – it’s not – but more that the process and steps that are taken to achieve it are so outdated and inefficient.

As an example, let’s consider a pension fund, who decides to invest in a mid-size businesses in the airport space. They might choose to do this as an experiment, or because they are being encouraged from a political/social perspective to deploy more capital into the business sector, as banks retreat. Rather than hand out the cash to private equity, this one they do direct.

In this instance, there are likely to be a few consistent factors.

• It is highly likely the pension fund has never invested in the space, therefore has no internal due diligence experience
• We can imagine the ticket size will be relatively small, compared to traditional investments
• The cost to upskill the internal investment team, or hire consultants will impact ROI more than traditional listed equity investments, harming the deal optics

If we assume the project was run well, then once due diligence is completed, some very good and useful intellectual capital will now exist inside the fund. However given it’s not every day an airport goes out looking for investment, that intellectual capital is likely to sit unused, gathering dust.

Not terribly productive.

But surely there is another way? I mean, if AirBnB can help us rent out spare rooms, is there something similar that could help a fund ‘rent’ out its knowledge?

And if we take this one step further, who’s to say the investment team needed the knowledge at all in the first place – could they have simply rented it from others to start off with?

Investing in businesses is often deemed a due diligence problem. It’s getting worse, as the rate at which new business models are emerging is increasing, and digital complexity is compounding. The gap between traditional bankers and even fintech lenders, private equity firms and VCs will continue to grow – so long as we keep the same in-house model of due diligence. No man is an island. Or more aptly, no fund.

I think there may be a solution, powered by the crowd and underpinned by cryptoeconomics. There is a powerful collective wisdom in the market, that simply needs to be structured in a way that aligns incentives correctly throughout the entire process.

For those more complex, finicky deals, that just fall into the ‘too hard basket’, there must be a better way forward.

I will be in London from the 26^th of November to 29^th. If you would like to connect drop me a line on Twitter, or connect with me on Linkedin!

Daily Fintech Advisers provides strategic consulting to organizations with business and investment interests in Fintech. Jessica Ellerm is a thought leader specializing in Small Business and the Gig Economy and is the CEO and Co-Founder of Zuper, a new superannuation startup in Australia.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the flow of capital.

You do that when you run a super fund. Especially when you are thinking about the opportunities that exist when you have the ability to be significantly more agile with your investment strategy.

And when you link the use of capital to where it is needed most, to grow the economy, you naturally gravitate towards the small business sector, and the unlisted asset space.

It’s not as easy as flicking a switch though – investing pension fund money is a huge responsibility, and how it is handled is a serious business. Small business and the unlisted space is notoriously risky, and pricing and handling that risk is the dark art of this game.

But it is relatively patient capital, and there are some interesting dynamics that can be explored, based on this principle.

But before you even get to that point, you need to find good businesses, and that is another huge problem that still needs to be solved.

One fintech in that space trying to solve part of that particular problem for wealth managers, like pension funds, is Delio. Based out of Cardiff, Wales, the platform offers ‘infrastructure as a service’ to help manage the entire unlisted asset investment process, from origination to exit.

Wealth managers, private banks, investment banks, family offices and many more can use the platform’s white label digital insfrastructure to upload deals and manage the entire process, end to end. The company is already partnered with UK Business Angels Association, connecting over 15,000 angel investors with high quality deal flow.

DelioConnect also offers platform to platform integration, so clients can originate, syndicate or distribute within the trusted network.

These sorts of platforms are the future of getting capital to small business. They are potentially far more powerful than neobanks in the SME space. And they solve the crowd-sourced due diligence problem. Which until technology is sophisticated enough to manage on its own – for which we are still a way off – is critical to increasing the flow of money into productive, growth investments.

The principles behind how platforms like Delio work should be attractive to smart pension funds and new age wealth managers, looking for efficiencies and an edge in the unlisted space.

Daily Fintech Advisers provides strategic consulting to organizations with business and investment interests in Fintech. Jessica Ellerm is a thought leader specializing in Small Business and the Gig Economy and is the CEO and Co-Founder of Zuper, a new superannuation startup in Australia.