iCapital to Add ‘Reusable Financial Identity’ With Parallel Markets Acquisition

FinTech company iCapital plans to enhance its alternative investment marketplace platform for the wealth and asset management industries by acquiring Parallel Markets.

The company entered into a definitive agreement under which iCapital will acquire Parallel Markets, which provides “reusable financial identity,” the companies said in a Thursday (Jan. 16) press release.

The acquisition will enable iCapital to streamline digital identity, investment onboarding and compliance verification — areas that are “a major friction point in private markets investing,” iCapital Chairman and CEO Lawrence Calcano said in the release.

“Parallel Markets has pioneered software that supports a reusable investor passport, streamlining these duplicative processes for advisers, investors and fund managers,” Calcano said. “As we continue to evolve our tech stack, we will enhance automated entry for alternative investing and leverage AI and machine learning to offer a complete, intuitive end-to-end solution.”

The acquisition will integrate Parallel Markets’ technology with iCapital’s onboarding and compliance monitoring processes to create an iCapital Investor Passport that will offer a turnkey onboarding solution for both institutional and wealth management fund investors, according to the release.

These investors will be able to use this universal reusable investor identity to store, manage and share personal information needed for fund subscription and compliance verification in private markets, per the release.

“As of today, we have focused on fund managers and the broader private wealth channel which is an increasingly important focus for leading financial institutions,” Parallel Markets Co-Founder and CEO Tony Peccatiello said in the release. “We are thrilled to join iCapital and together provide an innovative, tech-enabled identity management service that powers further integration between asset and wealth managers in a seamless experience.”

This announcement came a day after identity verification firm Prove said it acquired fellow digital identity company Portabl in a move that gives Prove access to Portabl’s offerings that include reusable ID verification and networks.

Prove said in a press release that Portabl provides a functionality that lets users eliminate the need for repetitive verification processes by securely storing positive verifications once in a “device-independent wallet” and then choosing to share some or all of those attributes and credentials with businesses or service providers.