IceCap Group streamlines subscription process and raises 40% larger fund with Nova

“Nova helped us convert prospects to investors and get started on the right foot with them. We’re able to make a good impression with our investors from day one, which then makes the rest of the relationship easier to manage.”

Challenge

IceCap Group is a New York-based private money lender specialized in real estate lending. Since its inception, the company has grown to one of the largest private lenders in the world, originating more than $1.64 billion in loans that enable borrowers to quickly purchase, renovate, and construct residential real estate. 

Andrea Knorring, IceCap’s Head of Investor Relations and Business Development, wanted to improve the manual work that stifled their previous fund subscription process. 

For their first fund, she tried mapping the fund’s PDF subscription documents to DocuSign but found it to be difficult because of the length and complexities of the documents. DocuSign also fell short in managing the subscription review process after submission. There was no centralized dashboard to review investors’ statuses.

“To get our documents to map properly and in a way that made sense from the user perspective, there was a lot of trial and error that happened,” Knorring said. “After doing it once, I never wanted to do that again.”

Solution

For their second fund, IceCap wanted a solution that would scale with their growth while providing the best investor experience possible. Knorring explored opportunities with their fund administrator but ultimately needed a platform that could be easily used by both their investors and the investor relations team.

Nova exceeded those requirements by mapping IceCap’s subdocs to digital workflows, integrating with their fund administrator’s existing processes, pre-filling investor information, and providing a place to securely upload sensitive documents.

Conditional logic and pre-fill options

Nova’s workflows are built with conditional logic and pre-fill functions that cut down on the amount of information investors need to provide. Both features were important to improving onboarding time and efficiency, and provided an investor experience that felt custom to each investor. 

Shared dashboards with fund administrators

Nova provided a centralized dashboard for IceCap and their fund administrator to review subscription status and specific investor information. Each party could easily mark areas for revision that the investor could directly amend in the platform, and see exactly where investors were in the process. 

Secure portal for PII and sensitive documents

Knorring wanted to reduce considerable back-and-forth in email that made their original process inefficient and less secure. With Nova, IceCap investors now securely upload any sensitive information, such as licenses and PII, directly into Nova. 

“Investors from our first fund told us how much easier it was to invest in our second fund. We really needed this. We really needed Nova to make our process more streamlined and clean.”

Results

The speed and efficiency of onboarding helped IceCap close their $32 million fund (45% larger than their first fund) with less manual work, increased security, and a better investor experience. IceCap’s repeat investors immediately noticed a difference in their onboarding experience when using Nova, and overall onboarding time was reduced from days to hours.

“Investors from our first fund told us how much easier it was to invest in our second fund,” Knorring said. “We really needed this. We really needed Nova to make our process more streamlined and clean.”

Not only are IceCap’s investors happy, but IceCap’s investor relations team can better manage their process in sync with their fund administrator. Prior to Nova, the extra layer of parlaying information between IceCap and their fund admin created delays and the potential for miscommunication. With Nova, IceCap’s fund admin could focus on their strengths instead of troubleshooting technology. 

Knorring noted that forward-thinking asset managers should start committing to operational efficiencies if they’re looking to scale.  

“Investor onboarding at large is such a huge pain point in our industry. And we've become so efficient in so many other parts of our industry. Once you start experiencing these efficiencies in other parts of your life, you almost command it everywhere else,” Knorring noted. “I feel so much more confident about our ability to grow into our size with Nova as one of our partners.”