Today Apex Group announced a partnership with Inveniam, which uses a blockchain and AI-based platform to provide trusted valuation data for alternative assets such as real estate and private equity. The solution allows Apex to offer its clients’ Valuation as a Service’. Last year Apex led a $25 million Series A funding for Inveniam.
Publicly listed assets are easy to buy and sell, partly because of a liquid market and because pricing data is readily available. In contrast, private assets often involve extracting information from the seller by request and then performing due diligence on the data that can take months.
Inveniam’s ‘Valuation as a Service’ aims to speed up the time consuming due diligence needed for private asset valuations, while at the same time allowing the asset owner to keep control of the data. An interested buyer can be given permission to view the data.
“As allocations to private asset classes continue to grow, trusted data is essential to being able to transact in private market assets. Using data that is verified on blockchain, through our innovative partnership with Inveniam will create efficiencies and deliver benefits for the $3 trillion of client assets we service,” said Georges Archibald, Chief Innovation Officer & Regional Head of North America, Apex Group.
The blockchain stores a series of verified documents that incorporate data, with AI used to extract data from the documents. For example, in the case of real estate, that might include rental payment status, utility bills and footfall for a shopping mall. Industry experts can verify the data, and Inveniam already has several big names that have logged data on the platform. That includes Cushman & Wakefield, JLL, CBRE in real estate and accountants Deloitte and Baker Tilly, amongst others.
While Apex is offering the service to its conventional clients, Inveniam’s solution provides significant benefits to enable the trading of security tokens when these private assets become tokenized.
The fund distribution sector has engaged with blockchain for years, but Apex made its first significant steps last year when it acquired a controlling interest in FundAdminChain.