Trust Capital Adopts Intralinks to Increase the Security and Efficiency of Investor Communications

Trust Capital Co., Ltd
 

Trust Capital Co., Ltd. implemented Intralinks for Alternative Investments in September 2018 as a tool for communication between the funds it manages and investors. Unlike email, which Trust Capital previously used, the Intralinks platform not only minimizes security risks but provides the additional benefits of speeding and enhancing the efficiency of communications.

Situation

Trust Capital Co., Ltd., founded in 2000 and based in Tokyo, is a principal investment firm specializing in mezzanine financing, early stage venture financing, emerging growth, growth capital, recapitalization, fund of fund investment in buyout funds and infrastructure investment in mega-solar business.

As a pioneer in mezzanine investments in Japanese private equity, Trust Capital has delivered successful performances and formed various types of funds, such as venture investment, private equity fund investment, growth capital investment and infrastructure investment, on top of mezzanine investment, accepting funds from financial institutions and pension foundations.

Previously, Trust Capital sent notification documents, financial statements and other sensitive documents to investors by attaching data files to emails. Because the type and destination of reports submitted to each fund all differ, painstaking work was needed to prevent mistakenly sending reports to the wrong recipients.

To prevent errors, Trust Capital used a number of staff to perform multiple checks by hand. The checking process had to be performed at every send – even when an investor asked to resend a past report; so, streamlining document sharing with investors was a challenge.

To resolve these issues, Trust Capital began considering the introduction of a secure and simple system for sharing and managing notifications, documents, reports and other sensitive data it sends to investors.

Solution

After comparing a number of services for communicating with fund investors, Trust Capital selected Intralinks as its solution for fund management and investor reporting.

Trust Capital choose Intralinks for a number of reasons: First, Intralinks’ solution is a tool used by private equity funds worldwide, so Trust Capital was confident that investors would be highly receptive to it. In fact, Trust Capital already had experience using Intralinks and found the platform’s functions and easy-to-use design were based on a thorough understanding of their business and were perfect for their team. And at the stage when Trust Capital was choosing a solution, the Intralinks sales team and presales engineer provided timely and appropriate support. After an overall assessment, Trust Capital decided to adopt Intralinks.

Trust Capital decided in September 2018 to adopt Intralinks; by October it had completed deployment and started using the solution on a full-scale basis. Before rolling out, Intralinks’ customer support conducted training for administrators in a production environment. Thanks to detailed explanations on operations such as user registration and organization of folders, Trust Capital was able to set up a portal for investors and share documents without a hitch. At the deployment stage, in particular, Trust Capital found the ability to use Microsoft Excel file templates to batch and register users and folders very convenient.

Benefits

At Trust Capital today, Intralinks is used by a four-person team in charge of investor communications. On the investors side, it is used by front- and back-office staff and custodians, and more.

The greatest benefit Trust Capital has experienced since implementing Intralinks is that the company has been able to enhance security when sharing notification documents, reports and sensitive data with investors.

In the unfortunate event that confidential information is accidentally shared with someone other than the intended recipient, not only could the fund suffer a major loss, but in some cases it could damage Trust Capital’s credibility. Trust Capital says that the greatest benefit of adopting Interlinks is that it has minimized such risks.

Naturally, the company no longer needs to have a number of staff performing multiple checks by hand, thereby saving labor and speeding and enhancing the efficiency of the business.

Another aspect that Trust Capital sees as a major benefit is the solution’s Japanese-language capability. With the introduction of the new system, Trust Capital was expecting investors to ask questions not only about the content of reports but also on how to use it. Intralinks responds directly, in Japanese, to such questions; Trust Capital sees that as another major benefit.

Looking ahead
 

Several months have passed since Trust Capital began using Intralinks on a full scale. Trust Capital expects to soon start to benefit from other functions Intralinks provides.

Trust Capital knows that there are more functions whose value it has yet to realize, and to gradually learn how to use these functions is its short-term goal. In the future, Trust Capital aims to master Intralinks reporting features to identify which investor has seen which information, transmit the necessary information to the right people, speedily and with pinpoint accuracy, and analyze the log for use in marketing to prospective clients.

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