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.