The debt capital market (DCM) is growing faster than ever: S&P Global Ratings Research estimates that $11 trillion in corporate debt is set to mature between 2022 and 2026. This presents vast opportunity for firms operating in the debt capital markets. To take full advantage, however, today’s firms need a modern, centralized, streamlined database system designed to help them efficiently manage and track their portfolios and deals.
For DCM professionals still working the old-fashioned way, managing and storing data within several disparate software platforms requires significant time and effort. This outdated approach also makes it more difficult for them to find the most up-to-date data — leading to poor client service and satisfaction.
On the other hand, vertical-specific CRMs with centralized databases help DCM professionals operate more efficiently. This type of system stores all contacts, activities, and other critical information in a single source of truth — increasing data accuracy and consistency, and improving internal collaboration and communication for faster deal execution. In other words, a central database system is a must-have for investment firms operating in the debt capital markets.
Improve transparency, communication, and collaboration
To close deals faster, DCM professionals need to be able to easily share relevant information and updates with one another. A central database within your firm’s deal and relationship management platform can greatly increase transparency across teams, transforming firmwide knowledge into actionable intelligence.
This database can store all deal-related information — including debt issuer, deal structure, investor base, and relevant regulatory requirements — within a single source of truth. Your professionals won’t have to waste time asking their colleagues for the latest deal updates or combing their email inboxes for details. Instead, they can quickly and easily find the data they need in one place.
DealCloud’s cross-collaboration feature also lets your teams easily work and communicate in a single, unified environment. All authorized parties can access the latest content and data from across your firm’s various systems. They can also update and collaborate on content in real time and set up instant notifications and status updates on existing or active deals. These capabilities reduce the risk of miscommunication and ensure that everyone is on the same page.
Enhance market research and industry intelligence
DealCloud’s central database for deal and relationship management also combines anonymized market data with your firm’s proprietary data. The tool connects with external solutions and third-party data providers, such as S&P Global Market Intelligence, PitchBook, and Preqin. These integrated third-party data connections allow for fast market researching, querying, and filtering within the DealCloud platform, so users won’t have to toggle back and forth between sites.
Additionally, DealCloud centralizes and integrates your firm’s disparate data sources to provide key analytics and meaningful intelligence. DealCloud users can access these through easy-to-read, interactive dashboards and automated reports that help them better understand their data. These enhanced data analytics capabilities let professionals make faster, better-informed decisions about potential deals.
By leveraging these resources and insights, your firm can better understand market trends, identify funding and investment opportunities, predict individual buy-side opportunities, and make informed investment decisions in the debt capital markets.
Execute deals faster
Your firm can also leverage DealCloud’s Relationship Intelligence to quickly create new deal flows. When evaluating a deal, DealCloud assigns a score based on the similarities between the deal and past market transactions. These attributes include industry, sector, and revenue metrics. These scores help your firm make more accurate predictions and better-informed decisions about potential deals.
To ensure these predictions accurately reflect your firm’s unique goals, your team can adjust the weights assigned to different attributes. For example, you might score a potential deal higher if the investor has worked with your team before. After you determine how you want DealCloud to score deals, the system will streamline the scoring process so you can quickly make decisions.
Once your firm takes on a new deal, your professionals will need a way to quickly add and update information around that deal. DealCloud’s integration with Microsoft Outlook lets users securely sync information and data directly from their email inboxes into the DealCloud platform. Your firm can create records for new deals, contacts, and companies. DealCloud will then sync and attach files and metadata from email conversations to these records, presenting a simple, unified view of the data. These time-saving capabilities will help your professionals execute deals faster and more accurately.
Manage conflict-of-interest risks and facilitate compliance
U.S. laws like the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act impose specific requirements on investment banks operating in the debt capital markets. To successfully execute deals in the debt capital markets, you must be able to identify and manage conflicts of interest and confidential information.
Having a single source of truth lets your professionals easily search subsidiaries, shareholders, and related parties to prevent conflicts. With DealCloud Conflicts, you can leverage a suite of solutions to perform due diligence and better manage conflicts of interest throughout a deal’s lifecycle. For example, the DealCloud Employee Compliance software offers a modern, configurable solution that gives compliance officers a holistic view of employees’ personal investments, trading, gifts, and outside activities, helping them to better mitigate risk and protect against regulatory fines and reputational damage.
Increase data accuracy, privacy, and governance
Since DCM firms manage a large amount of confidential information, they have to comply with various data privacy requirements such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations.
A central CRM database can help your firm better manage classified data and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.
CRMs like DealCloud reduce data risks by maintaining an audit trail of data changes, approvals, and communications in one centralized location. DealCloud technology also uses AI to inspect inconsistent and insufficient data sets, ensuring that your firm uses the most accurate and up-to-date information to execute deals. These capabilities negate the need for manual checks across multiple systems, saving your professionals time and effort.
DealCloud is also designed with sophisticated data protection, storage, and privacy practices to meet the data privacy and governance needs of DCM firms. These help ensure that critical information is handled securely and responsibly, supporting a more effective and efficient deal execution process.
Access every aspect of sophisticated relationships
Competition is fiercer than ever, which is why your firm has to keep its strategies strong and its relationships stronger.
Your team members develop relationships with a wide array of professionals and firms at every stage of the transaction lifecycle. As the volume and complexity of these relationships grow, your teams need a reliable way to store information about them.
Manually entering this ever-evolving data in Rolodexes and spreadsheets is no longer an acceptable method, since it makes finding and updating information more time-consuming and difficult. By centralizing communication data, DealCloud’s central database strengthens relationship management and lowers the risk of lapsed connections.
Firms can also easily transform day-to-day activities into actionable relationship intelligence by sourcing leveraged finance investments. Your firm’s leveraged finance professionals can also leveraging DealCloud’s Lender Network dashboard (below), which gives them a full view of co-investors and fellow deal participants. Easy-to-use filters also allow lenders to view firms based on strategy, institution type, and deal process stage.
Manage relationships more efficiently and effectively for the long-term success of the firm. Use DealCloud to source and track data in a single, accessible place.
Improve portfolio management and deal monitoring
In today’s complex investment landscape, DCM firms must keep a watchful eye on the progress of each deal they pursue. DealCloud’s central database for DCM professionals provides numerous benefits for firms looking to institutionalize deal, relationship, and pipeline management workflow processes.
DealCloud provides a centralized database that can automatically track all deals from origination to close. It provides real-time visibility into the status of each deal and reduces the risk of lost or forgotten deals. By leveraging the Deal Pipeline dashboard in DealCloud (below), debt capital market professionals gain a 360-degree view of their deal pipeline by stage, seniority, and volume.
DealCloud also automates the portfolio management process, allowing DCM firms to track and analyze key metrics such as portfolio size, yield, and risk. Your firm can then make more informed investment decisions and monitor its portfolios more effectively.
Streamline your debt capital market deals with DealCloud
DealCloud centralizes firmwide intelligence and transforms it into the proprietary insights your firm and people need to grow the deal pipeline. DealCloud’s central database for deal and relationship management provides a single source of truth, so your professionals can better manage relationships and execute more deals within the debt capital markets.
Transform the way your professionals approach every stage of a deal, from origination to execution. Schedule a demo to learn how DealCloud can help your build a better pipeline in the debt capital markets.