General Partner Onboarding
A cornerstone of AssetMetrix’s value proposition is its proactive, direct engagement with General Partners (GPs) on behalf of Limited Partners (LPs). For Brunel, AssetMetrix took ownership of communication with 97 direct GPs and 62 Fund-of-Fund managers, responsible for data collection across performance, ESG, valuations, and more. This removed a major operational burden from Brunel and allowed for streamlined, accurate, and timely data flows into the AssetMetrix platform.
Document Management
Document migration was a critical element of the onboarding. AssetMetrix successfully migrated over 30,000 documents from Brunel’s previous provider. This process included:
Mapping all legacy documents to a newly designed, more comprehensive taxonomy
Assigning detailed metadata for each file, including fund, investor, and document type associations
Using automation scripts to ingest documents into a centralized, secure document lake
Enabling advanced retrieval options through filters and full-text search
The result is a single source of truth for all documents, accessible and searchable within seconds.
Data Migration and Transformation
“Data migration is one of the most critical and complex phases during client onboarding. It’s not just about transferring data, it’s about ensuring that master data, transactional records, and investment structures are accurately mapped to the new environment while preserving data integrity, traceability, and regulatory compliance.”
— Jiaojiao Zhao, FRM - Senior Solutions Engineer Data
For Brunel, the data migration phase presented both a strategic opportunity and a technical challenge. The task involved ingesting, mapping, and transforming vast amounts of sensitive and interconnected data. With a portfolio comprising 10 sub-portfolios across 4 investment cycles, over 700 fund investor accounts, more than 3,000 underlying private capital objects (PCOs), and over 120,000 transactions, the data landscape was both extensive and nuanced.
Key challenges addressed during this phase included:
Investment Structure Alignment: Complex multi-level hierarchies, especially from fund-of-fund (FoF) structures, were redesigned for consistency and to support new analytics and reporting logic.
Master Data Standardization: Inconsistent taxonomies, entity naming mismatches, and missing attributes across data sources required intensive consolidation and cleansing to ensure uniformity and downstream usability.
Transactional Data Mapping: Historical transaction records had to be deeply analyzed and mapped to ensure accuracy in performance measurement and reporting. Several cases required the creation of custom rules or new logic to handle non-standard scenarios.
Data Transformation Complexity: A delta migration strategy was employed to integrate live in-flight changes during the transition window. This added another layer of complexity, as changes needed to be accurately synchronized without disruption.
Comprehensive Data Inventory: Over 800 unique data points were catalogued to map external records to internal structures. This inventory ensured full traceability and minimized the risk of data gaps or logic misalignment.
Enhancements Beyond Legacy Providers: Some areas of Brunel’s portfolio required new and improved handling, such as cycle breakdowns, recapitalized distributions, unit-based tracking, or portal-ready data logic—surpassing what their previous provider was able to offer.
Case-by-Case Investment Handling: Specific investments called for tailored treatments, including advanced data aggregation or segregation, to reflect Brunel’s internal investment logic.
Reconciliation and Validation: Post-migration, a rigorous reconciliation process was carried out to match balances, valuations, and mappings against expected outcomes. Discrepancies were flagged, analyzed, and corrected with close client involvement.
Transition to BAU: Final preparations for the business-as-usual phase included historical data corrections and adjustment bookings. Complex legacy data gaps were addressed through official documentation, and all processes were handed over cleanly to operational teams.
This phase not only ensured data integrity and operational continuity for Brunel but also drove significant learnings and enhancements within the AssetMetrix platform—raising the bar for all future migrations and client onboardings.
ESG Data Campaigns
ESG reporting is a key focus area for Brunel, and AssetMetrix delivered a tailored, multi-stream data collection strategy. To date, four of five ESG campaigns have been completed, with the final campaign for Private Equity currently underway.
The approach has been flexible by design:
Templates and workflows for Fund-of-Funds across select asset classes
Direct engagement support Brunel’s strategic partner for Private Equity ESG data
Manual outreach where faster results could be achieved
Bulk data ingestion for Infrastructure portfolio
This flexibility illustrates the AssetMetrix capability to tailor ESG solutions based on a client’s unique needs, supporting both standardised reporting frameworks and bespoke requirements.
Workflow Engine Enhancements
In the spirit of continuous improvement, the onboarding led to major product enhancements within the AssetMetrix workflow engine. The transactional export logic was revamped to include:
Additional bank account data fields
Safety checks and validation rules
Enhanced approval steps and routing logic
These developments were designed with Brunel in mind but are now part of the core platform, benefiting all clients going forward.
