The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, which provides the post-trade market infrastructure for the global financial services industry, has invested in iCapital and announced a strategic collaboration with the alternative investment platform.
As an initial part of their collaboration, DTCC and iCapital will integrate DTCC’s Alternative Investment Product with iCapital’s platform. This will help connect the two organizations’ capabilities across transaction processing, data exchange, access, administration and reporting. DTCC and iCapital will also explore potential collaboration on current and emerging technologies across the alternative investment landscape. According to Lawrence Calcano, chairman and CEO of iCapital, these could include blockchain-enabled DLT and tokenization.
DTCC serves as an industry-owned utility that clears and settles securities transactions. Over the years, it has worked with the financial services industry to standardize data and processing for multiple financial operations, including account opening and closing, funds transfers, billing and reconciliation.
“Private markets represent one of the most significant growth areas in financial services today, creating an urgent need for modern, scalable infrastructure. Our strategic partnership with iCapital reflects DTCC’s commitment to supporting the continued evolution of diverse financial markets,” said Frank La Salla, president, CEO and director of DTCC, in a statement. “Broader adoption of alternative investments will depend on making the ecosystem easier to navigate, more efficient to operate, and highly resilient.”
As part of the deal, Talia Klein, head of wealth & investment solutions at DTCC, will become an observer on iCapital’s board of directors.
iCapital, one of the biggest and most widely used alternative investment platforms in the wealth management industry, has gotten financial backing from multiple industry players. Last year, for example, it raised over $820 million in financing from T. Rowe Price Associates, T. Rowe Price Investment Management, SurgoCap Partners, State Street Investment Management, Temasek, UBS and BNY. Additional investors in the platform include Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, BlackRock and Blackstone, among others.