Investment and asset management
Funds, family offices and private landlords running a book, steering by numbers that are always a quarter old.
Where it breaks
A small sample of the problems we hear most often in investment and asset management. Not a complete list, and not all of them will be yours.
- 01
The quarterly pack takes three weeks
Rent roll out of the PMS, costs from the accountant, valuations from a folder of PDFs. Three weeks later the board reads numbers that were true in March, and half the meeting goes on agreeing which version is right.
- 02
Nobody agrees what an asset earns
Rent sits in the PMS, costs in Xero, capex in a project sheet. Net income per asset gets assembled by hand, and two people assembling it produce two answers.
- 03
A rent review passes unactioned
Break dates, review dates and repair covenants sit in leases signed by different people over twenty years. Somebody typed the key dates into a tracker once and it has been maintained unevenly since. The notice itself has to be procedurally perfect, so a missed date and a badly served notice cost you the same thing.
- 04
Arrears chased when someone notices
The aged debt report gets read monthly. By then a tenant three months down has stopped answering the phone. Credit control is one person's memory and a Friday afternoon.
- 05
Nobody checks the service charge from your side
The managing agent writes the budget, bills it, then sends a reconciliation. Someone is meant to read it against the lease apportionments and the RICS code before signing it off on the owner's behalf. Every system in the sector was built for the party issuing the invoice, not the party paying it.
- 06
Forty SPVs, one company secretary's spreadsheet
A portfolio held one vehicle per building means filings, identity verification and Register of Overseas Entities updates multiplied by forty, each with its own date. Nobody has a single view of which entities are verified, which are due and which have a director who has not been through it.
What we'd build
A small sample of the kind of thing we build. What we'd actually scope depends on which of the problems above is costing you most.
One live number per asset
Rent, cost, capex and valuation held against each asset and updated as the source systems change. NOI, yield and LTV read off the same record whoever asks.
One agreed NOI, yield and LTV per asset, and no board meeting spent arguing which version is right.
Reporting that drafts itself
The quarterly pack builds from live data on the day you ask for it, in whichever format that lender or investor wants. A person reviews it.
Days off every quarterly pack, and numbers the board reads while they are still true.
Lease events surfaced early
Reviews, breaks, expiries, indexation and repair covenants read out of the leases themselves and diarised with enough notice to act. You see what's coming in the next two quarters, and the dilapidations position on every lease expiring in the next three years is a number in the business plan rather than a surprise at expiry.
Fewer reviews and breaks missed, and dilapidations in the business plan rather than at expiry.
The service charge read against the leases
The agent's budget and year-end reconciliation checked against the actual apportionment schedules and the recoverable heads, and returned as a challenge list: costs outside the lease, apportionments that don't match, lines that moved between budget and actual without an explanation.
Costs outside the lease and apportionments that do not match, challenged before you sign them off.
Arrears worked the day they age
An agent works the aged debt daily, contacts the tenant, logs the response and escalates what it can't resolve. You get the cases that need a person.
Lower aged debt, faster recovery, and credit control that does not depend on one person's Friday.
Recognise any of these?
Thirty minutes with a founder. Walk us through the problems your team lives with and we'll talk about whether any of it has to stay that way.