Support your investor relations teams with industry-specific AI

Investor relations teams are under pressure to leverage AI to accelerate their workflows, support obligation compliance, and strengthen existing LP relationships. IR teams are crucial to private fund managers’ success. They are responsible for managing communications with prospective investors during the fundraising process, and after helping to bring new investors into the fold, they take the lead in communicating performance information and reports.

Investor relations is often the LPs’ point of contact for questions and concerns. The team is responsible for maintaining good relationships in order to increase the likelihood of LPs reinvesting in future funds.

Take a look at some of the challenges IR teams face right now and how Ontra’s Insight solution supports IR’s endeavors.

Top investor relations pain points

Attracting new investors

The private markets have battled through a tough fundraising environment over the past several years. S&P Global reported global private equity fundraising fell for the third year in a row in 2024. Private equity funds secured $680.04 billion last year — a 30% decrease from 2023. Due to weak exit activity, many investors have been constrained in how much they can invest in new funds.

To reach their fund goals, fund managers have had to seek out a larger number of LPs to hit their targets. Smaller funds, in particular, have had a much harder time attracting investors than larger, more established managers. Ultimately, IR teams across the board are working hard to attract and win over new and returning investors.

Upholding investor obligations

IR teams collaborate with other internal teams to ensure the GP meets its obligations to investors. This function is particularly crucial as in-house professionals are dealing with more side letters and a greater variety of unique obligations. Unfortunately, traditional processes are often manual, disjointed, and time-consuming, creating compliance and communication challenges. IR teams are on the lookout for efficient and effective ways to manage investor obligation compliance and strengthen GP-LP relationships to retain long-term investors.

Answering LP questions

Another aspect of building and maintaining long-term LP relationships is responding to investors’ questions quickly and accurately. IR teams field investor questions throughout the fund lifecycle, and in many cases, they’re dealing with both more sophisticated LPs and less experienced investors. IR teams receive a wide range of questions. While some queries require input from legal, compliance, tax, or another internal team, others IR could answer quickly with easy access to fund LPAs and side letters.

Leveraging tech to drive efficiency

IR teams across the private markets are feeling the pressure to leverage AI to work quickly while maintaining accuracy. AI has advanced significantly in recent years, and many private markets firms are mandating in-house teams to determine how they can leverage the technology to improve efficiency, lower costs, and boost value.

Improve visibility & collaboration with Insight

Ontra’s AI platform powering the private fund lifecycle supports IR teams’ crucial work. Insight modernizes fundraising, simplifies compliance, and increases transparency for in-house teams.

What is Insight? Insight is a digital, single source of truth for fund documents and investor obligations. Ontra’s AI-enabled contract digitization quickly identifies and categorizes clauses in fund documents, including LPAs and side letters, transforming paperwork into a searchable, digital compendium.

Common IR use cases for Insight

Investor relations teams commonly use Insight to:

• Prepare for and execute ESG reporting
• Determine notice requirements and provide notice or disclosures to investors
• Prepare for advisory committee meetings and update advisory committee membership
• Prepare for LP meetings
• Respond to investor questions and requests

Easily access investor data

💡 IR, legal, compliance, ESG, and other internal teams can collaborate better with a central, digital source of truth.

By digitizing fund documents and investor obligations in Insight, fund managers significantly increase transparency and collaboration for their in-house teams. LPAs, side letters, and other fund documents become structured contract data, which IR, legal, and compliance teams can quickly and confidently search, review, and compare.

Answer LP questions fast

💡 AI Search provides IR teams with a self-help solution for answering LP questions rather than waiting for responses from busy in-house legal teams or external counsel.

IR professionals can leverage Ontra’s AI Search feature to quickly surface actionable answers informed by the full scope of the firm’s agreements. Simply ask Insight questions and receive detailed responses in seconds with the ability to explore the supporting obligations with links to reference text.

Insight relies on semantic search, which understands the user’s intent and context of the search query. It is forgiving of typos — for example, “Most favred nations,” will still surface the most relevant provisions despite the typo. Additionally, a customer can search “key man,” and Insight surfaces key person provisions.

Semantic search benefits IR professionals who may not know the correct legal term to search. IR can quickly surface answers to LP questions and pursue additional feedback from internal or external counsel only when necessary.

Examples of AI Search queries for IR

• I have a meeting with [LP name] next week. What special rights does this investor have?
• Which reports is [LP name] entitled to receive regularly?
• Which of my investors have received a reduction in the management fee?
• Which of my investors are invited to the advisory committee?

Enhance accountability

💡Workflow features enable IR teams to promote accountability for meeting investor obligations, including required disclosures, reports, and notices.

In Insight, in-house teams can easily build multi-stakeholder task workflows to support compliance with event-based and recurring obligations assigned to particular stakeholders. For example, teams can create quarterly compliance checks, align on internal review and sign-off processes, and mark tasks completed to create an activity log in preparation for exams, audits, and other reporting requirements.

Documentation is also efficient. Teams can export fund documents and data necessary to demonstrate side letter compliance in seconds.

Ease investors’ burden

💡IR teams can be confident LPs receive the election options they’re entitled to through Insight’s dMFN feature.

Private fund managers can create forms in Insight to run modern MFN elections and disclosure processes. They can distribute MFN election forms, track progress, and review LP elections in one place.

Digital MFN elections offer an easier investor experience. LPs endure less back-and-forth with the fund managers and counsel. Ultimately, they have an easier time understanding what’s available to them and choosing the obligations best suited to their needs and goals, which promotes a stronger GP-LP relationship.

Ontra’s industry-specific software supports IR teams

IR teams have a tremendous amount of work on their plates. Insight is trusted by over 800 leading global fund managers and helps them ease the burden of answering LP questions and supporting GP-LP relationships.

Request an Insight demo today to learn more about how it can support IR teams.