August 30, 2020
The following is a list of the top institutional investor databases for investment sales professionals. Usually, the selection of a database is determined by what data you are looking for based on your role in your company; and, of course, price.
Dakota is a 3rd party marketing firm for boutique investment firms. We have raised over $40 billion since our founding in 2006 using our CRM and accurate data as a big competitive advantage. Why is it so important to us?
Simple: salespeople (me being one of them) are expensive and you want your salespeople to be productive, but having them do a lot of research looking for who to call on is counterproductive. Thus, it has been important to us to supply our team with highly accurate and qualified contacts to call on.
Institutional investor databases can provide a good foundation of contacts for sales professionals. Below is a review of what I believe are the top institutional investor databases for an investment sales professional to consider.
What channel(s) do you cover? (Consultants, RIAs, Banks, BD, Direct Pensions, Sub-advisory, etc.)
What is your product structure? (Mutual Funds, Separate Account, LP, ETF, CIT, etc.)
You have to be very clear on what you want and what would be most useful to you in your career. As a fundraiser for the past 23 years, the only thing that matters to me is qualified leads of investors that buy what we sell - both strategy (asset class) and structure (mutual fund, LP, ETF, separate account). The initial goal, therefore, is to start with a good and accurate list of qualified leads, and make sure that list grows each day. A big top to the funnel of qualified buyers is the ultimate goal.
Institutional investor databases can help you start with a good list, and then provide you with new leads.
The first question most salespeople ask when looking at institutional investor databases is: “What does it cost, and what do I get?”
It depends on exactly what you want out of a database, as each one delivers a slightly different value proposition; and the cost of each is commensurate with that value. For someone like me who has been raising capital for 23 years, I have a pretty strong opinion that if a database delivers accurate leads, we would be willing to pay almost anything.
In reality, most databases don’t deliver 100% accurate contact information. Yet we still subscribe to get an opportunity to start somewhere, and then do further research. We have always been willing to spend between $5,000 and $20,000 to give us information to move us in the right direction, which is at leasta starting point.
I think a fair price for an institutional investor database is between $8,000 and $12,000. However, each database delivers a slightly different value proposition as a mentioned above.
Below I have given a list of the leading institutional investor databases and their approximate price. Please don’t hold me to these exact prices as they change frequently, and most database companies will negotiate. The descriptions are from each company’s website, and I offer some comments on the utility of each database at the end of this article.
MMD pinpoints prospects, identifies new sales opportunities, and builds lasting relationships using market leading data. It's your essential partner in finding institutional investors.
Estimated Cost: $5,000 - $15,000
Focus: Institutional Investors
Pitchbook provides research and analyzes companies, deals, funds, investors and service providers across the entire private investment lifecycle.
Estimated cost: ~$24,000
Focus: Private Equity, Private Funds, Venture, M&A
Preqin gives indispensable data, analytics, and insights for alternative assets professionals around the globe.
Estimated cost: $5,000 - $30,000
Focus: Alternatives
Discovery Data helps companies grow their business in the financial services and insurance industries. They provide detailed profiles on 40,000 firms and over two million professionals.
Estimated cost: $5,000 - $20,000+
Focus: RIAs, BDs
The IC Research Institute is an independent provider of market intelligence data services on institutional investment consultants. The activities are designed to add value by making hard-to-find information accessible, and transforming fragmented data into a complete picture in order to accelerate the consultant relationship and sales management process.
The institute’s core online service is a vital cloud-based navigation system for consultant relations with truly global reach. IC Research aims to support clients in becoming successful in consultant relations and to save time, money, and “nerves” by shortening the sales management process and accelerating institutional business development. They're in the business of finding new business.
Estimated cost: $14,000
Focus: Institutional Consultants
Mandate Wire provides money managers with rapid, reliable and high-value investment intelligence on RFPs, planned allocations and institutional asset flows in Europe, North America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Its core focus is on pension fund information, but it also tracks charities, insurance companies, endowment funds and more.
Estimated cost: $7,500+
Focus: Pension Fund Searches
FinSearches is the most powerful and complete sales and marketing tool available for the institutional asset management industry for defined benefit plans, nonprofits and consultants.
Estimated cost: $7,500+
Focus: Pension Fund Searches, information on institutions
Opportunity Hunter has unparalleled perspective into the size, shape and dynamics of global asset management. They answer questions that are core to asset managers with analytics powered by unique quantitative and qualitative datasets and insight services curated by a team of industry experts.
Estimated cost: $15,000+
Focus: RIAs, BDs, Identifies what asset classes Advisors are invested in
FINTRX provides comprehensive family office intelligence engineered to help you identify, access, and raise family office capital.
Estimated cost: $10,000+
Focus: Family Office
Powered by the familiar and trusted Simfund tool, the Simfund Sub-advisory Module provides users with a comprehensive, integrated database of the sub-advised mutual fund and variable product universe.
Estimated Cost: $7,500+
Focus: Sub-advisory
Dakota Marketplace is a comprehensive institutional and intermediary database across all channels. It has been built by a fundraising team that uses the database daily and has raised over $40B since our founding in 2006.
Marketplace helps maximize your sales team's efficiency by eliminating valuable time spent researching. Get access to 10,000+ accounts and 31,000+ contacts. It's a complete database solution that covers all channels and plugs directly into your CRM giving you access to over 75 allocator investment preferences, institution and platform search openings, public plan minutes, manager presentations, 13F holdings and investment holdings, and fee analysis.
Cost: $14,500 and $1,000 for each additional user
Focus: Institutional and Intermediary channels
Most investment firms don't have a CRM with accurate, deep, or even qualified data on institutional investors. Why?
Because it’s a very hard thing to do.
Keeping data up-to-date is time-consuming, and it requires dedicated resources. Meanwhile, most firms rely on salespeople to do the updating, and that is a weak strategy at best.
Most company CRM databases are 60%+ out-of-date at any given time. When you add in the 25% annual turnover in the investment allocator business, it becomes obvious just how hard it is to keep a database up to date.
Investment salespeople need all the help they can get, and institutional investor databases are the solution. I suggest getting a demo of each one to try them out for yourself.
To learn more about Dakota Marketplace, start your free trial here.
Gui Costin is the Founder and CEO of Dakota.
