Genstar Capital, a premier personal fairness participant within the wealth administration area, is making a majority funding in Docupace, which offers back-office software program and help to advisory companies.
Genstar’s recapitalization of the agency follows FTV Capital’s majority funding in 2020. FTV will stay a minority investor.
Since FTV took possession, Docupace has grown considerably, with greater than 130 enterprise prospects and processing greater than 130,000 digital paperwork each day, in accordance with CEO David Knoch, who turned CEO after FTV took over.
In an interview with WealthManagement.com, Knoch stated the trade had not but broadly devised “a greater reply for automating the again workplace” than Docupace’s improvements.
“I feel we constructed a robust again workplace ecosystem and captured the eye of {the marketplace} broadly, together with personal fairness companies like Genstar,” Knoch stated, noting that the Docupace crew had identified the staff at Genstar for a while.
In response to Knoch, Genstar’s funding will assist the agency “speed up” its present product growth roadmap, which features a full overhaul of the Docupace consumer expertise and enhancements to the mixing structure for shoppers.
Moreover, Knoch expects extra M&A alternatives for the agency after closing on the funding by the top of the third quarter of this 12 months.
Docupace acquired two corporations in 2021: PreciseFP, a digital account aggregation and onboarding supplier and jaccomo, which offers compliance, information integration, monetary reporting and advisor compensation programs. However since then, Docupace has gone quiet on acquisitions.
“There’s a number of causes for that, not the least of which is the general acquisition market within the U.S.,” Knoch stated. “However we’ve a possibility in the present day in partnership with Genstar to carry different nice applied sciences into Docupace, into this back-office ecosystem, to enrich our personal product growth efforts.”
Knoch wouldn’t specify acquisition targets however stated Docupace’s objective was to create a back-office ecosystem for the trade, and any such capabilities the corporate doesn’t presently supply can be potential targets. There’s additionally no single associate or supplier spanning the whole thing of the trade, with most options focused at large- and mid-sized companies, Knoch stated.
“I feel each agency of each dimension is as entitled to an excellent operational expertise as every other agency, significantly the big companies, so we should always not find yourself with a distinction between the biggest and smallest because it exists in the present day,” he stated. “We might use the flexibility to do M&A or acquisition to make an answer like Docupace extra ubiquitous throughout the trade and provides each agency of each dimension a possibility to have an excellent back-office ecosystem.”
Genstar Capital, based in 1998 in San Francisco, manages over $49 billion in belongings throughout over 40 portfolio companies. It targets investments within the monetary providers, industrial, software program and healthcare industries.
Genstar’s first wealth administration funding was in 2015, when it took a controlling curiosity in Mercer Advisors. The agency acquired majority management of Cetera in 2018 and Cerity in 2022. Genstar Director Sid Ramakrishnan stated the agency had adopted Docupace’s transformation for a number of years and was prepared to assist it “on the following chapter of development.”
“The wealth administration ecosystem is extremely and ever-increasingly advanced, and companies want scalable operations that serve monetary advisors and their shoppers,” he stated.
FT Companions and RBC Capital Markets served because the monetary advisors for Docupace and Genstar, respectively. Gibson Dunn was Docupace’s authorized counsel, and Ropes and Grey served as Genstar’s authorized counsel. The phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed.
