Case Study

Challenges

Back-office inefficiencies slowing down deal flow and putting the brakes on growth

But they had a problem.

The task of creating, launching, and closing finance deals was littered with inefficiencies, which was frustrating for the business, its clients, and investors.

“Facilitating private placements was an extremely inefficient and cumbersome process for everyone involved,” explains VP of Investment Banking Emily Jameson. “Often this meant getting our corporate issuers funds much later than they had hoped, and we had expected.”

The onerous workflow kicked in as soon as a firm came to Canaccord Genuity looking for private equity. Once employees had prepared all the terms and documents for a deal, they had to manually email everything out to syndication teams.

The avalanche of emails continued when wealth advisors sent out the deal to interested investors.

“Already, you were looking at hundreds and hundreds of emails, all being sent out to a number of different groups, and different parties, and then waiting for responses, which delayed the deal flow,” says Emily.

From there, the syndication team had to assess expressions of interest from as many as 500 different investors.

“They would look at the total demand of the deal and then, via email, send out allocations to the respective equity capital markets desks, who’d then go back to their individual wealth advisors, who’d then distribute that to the end investor,” says Emily.

Sending so many emails and distributing so many documents to multiple recipients took up huge chunks of time and created unnecessary back-office costs.

The convoluted process became even more painful when Canaccord Genuity organized subscription agreements. Every individual investing in a private placement had to submit an agreement—and the entire process was done by hand.

“These legal documents can be anywhere from 5 to 50 pages, so it was a huge undertaking that we were asking potential investors to carry out,” says Emily.

Then things got even tougher. A high-level check of subscription agreements had to be carried out for discrepancies, such as incorrect addresses or missed information.

At that stage, 40% of subscription agreements were showing errors. And for every discrepancy, Canaccord Genuity had to send everything back to the respective party to correct it, creating even more wasted time passing documents back and forth.

“With everything done through email, there was a lot of room for error and things just took way longer than they needed to,” says Emily. “With so many issues to solve, closing deals could take several weeks or even months.”

This multitude of inefficiencies and bottlenecks was impacting Canaccord Genuity’s profitability and productivity, delaying getting finance to firms when they needed it, and negatively impacting investor relations.

Canaccord Genuity urgently wanted to find a better way—and automate and digitize their capital market processes.

That’s when they discovered Katipult.

“Everything was done through email. So there was just a lot of room for error and things took way longer than they needed to.”

Solution

Automating and accelerating the process of running private placements

To digitize and streamline its private placement workflow, Canaccord Genuity selected Katipult—a purpose-built platform for executing private capital deals.

“It was extremely important to us to work with a company that had the skillset, the technology team, and the management team to grow and drive improvements with us, so we could truly be the leader in the digitization of private placements and capital markets,” says Emily.

Unlike competitors’ offerings, Katipult covers all of the core functions of document management in the capital market space—and delivers higher ROI across every department and stakeholder involved in the workflow.

Because Katipult was simple to implement and use, Canaccord Genuity put the platform to work instantly.

First, they used interactive deal templates to create documents and conditions from pre-stored information in minutes, not days.

When syndication teams took over, they could easily assign work to wealth advisors inside the platform, without sending a single email. Advisors, meanwhile, no longer drowned in sticky notes and snail mail, because they could bulk-send documents in a couple of clicks.

“Katipult gives Canaccord Genuity employees, lawyers, Corporate issuers, wealth advisors, and investors a highly efficient way to collect and share information, and reduce the risk and errors that were occurring at every step of the process,” says Emily. “This creates a higher level of satisfaction—for all stakeholders involved in the workflow.”

Katipult also gives every participant involved in the workflow clear visibility of the deal’s lifecycle and progress, which makes it easy to spot any risks or issues before they become larger problems.

The biggest win for Canaccord Genuity was the automation of its subscription agreement process. Katipult auto-completes most of the required information and uses the latest e-signature technology to save investors time, eliminate errors, and accelerate deal flow.

“Katipult enables investors to fill out and sign their subscription agreement in less than 30 minutes,” says Emily. “They don’t have to worry about printing out lots of pages and scanning documents back in—it’s all done at the click of a button.

“I think the overall experience from the investor standpoint is extremely positive, because there’s less paperwork and their information is pulled from our internal database and auto populated to provide a seamless experience.”

Canaccord Genuity’s compliance team also benefits. Because the platform makes it easy to track and monitor deals, compliance has better visibility and confidence in the overall flow of every transaction, and real-time proof that employees are following compliant processes and adhering to company and regulatory policies.

“It was extremely important to us to work with a company that had the skillset, the technology team, and the management team to grow and drive improvements with us—so we could truly be the leader in the digitization of capital markets.”

Results

Document errors all but eliminated and deals closed in days, not weeks

Before Katipult, Canaccord Genuity’s ability to get funds to private companies quickly was hampered by inefficiencies and errors. With Katipult, the firm accelerates deal throughput, reduces back-office costs, unlocks capacity to pursue extra revenue, and provides a better client experience.

For Emily, the most impressive metric is that Katipult has reduced errors in subscription documents from 40% to 2%—that’s a 95% reduction!

“Katipult’s effectiveness at eliminating errors is a tremendous win for us,” she says. “Because our team no longer has to chase document revisions and corrections, we accelerate our workflow, and get the capital that we raise into the hands of the corporate issuers as fast as possible.”

The acceleration in workflow has been striking, with deals typically closed in days—not weeks.

“The speed at which we can get documents back and close the financing now is such an improvement,” says Emily. “When we facilitate financing faster, we can do more deals, work with more corporate clients, and raise more funds.”

Across every department and participant, Katipult is helping to save time and money, and improve morale. Back-office costs are down 35% and annual ROI is 400%.

“Katipult definitely has a ripple-down ROI effect in multiple different areas of our business,” says Emily. “The corporate issuer is much happier with the time it takes them to get their money, the investor is happier that they’re getting their stock sooner, and our equity capital markets employees have a more efficient and happy worklife.”

Emily appreciates how Katipult has enabled Canaccord Genuity to be at the forefront of innovation in private equity investing.

“In a constantly evolving space like capital markets, if you merely maintain the status quo you’ll be left behind,” she says. “Firms need to find new ways to provide investors and clients with a positive experience—and Katipult enables us to do that.”

While Emily values the vast improvements that Katipult has brought to the company’s workflows, she
sees Katipult as more than just a tool.

“When you partner with Katipult, you’re not just partnering with a software company. You’re partnering with a team of people that do everything they can to ensure you have the best solution possible for your specific business,” she says.

Emily recommends Katipult to any financial services company looking to remove costly inefficiencies in
their deal workflow.

“Katipult has been tremendous and allowed us to take that important first step in raising private
capital money in a simple digital way,” says Emily. “As things evolve in capital markets, we feel
confident that we’re working with a partner that has the ability to innovate and grow with us.”

“It was extremely important to us to work with a company that had the skillset, the technology team, and the management team to grow and drive improvements with us—so we could truly be the leader in the digitization of capital markets.”