As always, everyone at Castle Hall hopes that you, your colleagues and your family and loved ones are well and keeping positive, personally and professionally, as Covid continues to touch our lives.

I wanted to take a quick moment to touch on some recent developments at Castle Hall, as we continue to focus on bringing more Fintech to due diligence.

DiligenceExpress

DiligenceExpress is Castle Hall’s tool to monitor the Form ADV filings submitted by every investment manager registered with the SEC. Managers have 90 days from their year-end to update their ADV filings, which falls on March 31 this year for firms with a December 31 year end.

DiligenceExpress is available free of charge and allows you to “follow” an unlimited number of managers. Usage of the platform has grown exponentially, with our clients now tracking managers with more than $80 trillion of assets under management across all asset classes.

We are very proud of the growth of the DiligenceExpress platform - a press release discussing the growth is available here. 

If you would like to learn more about DiligenceExpress if you are not already using the tool, or would appreciate help adding more managers to the platform - please contact our client support team here.

Financial Statement Reviews

It is financial statement season, and our team in both Canada and Manila are already receiving audited accounts from the 3,000 plus funds we expect to review this year. If you are an OpsMonitor client (or have engaged with Castle Hall to complete dedicated financial statement reviews) you may have already seen your first financial statement reviews appearing on your DiligenceHub activity feed for those funds which have a “fast” audit.

If you would like to add financial statement reviews to your diligence program for this year, please contact us to learn more. Financial statements can, of course, be reviewed across any fund type and any asset class, including those tricky oil and gas partnerships and Luxembourg real estate vehicles!

ESG Due Diligence 

ESG due diligence is a key focus for Castle Hall, and our firm is committed to helping our clients dig deeper to identify managers who have implemented leading ESG practices - or those who talk the talk but do not walk the walk. Greenwashing is, unfortunately, a pervasive problem across an industry ready to emphasize marketing over substance in too many instances. 

Castle Hall offers two ESG due diligence products:

Responsible Investment Manager (“RIM”) enables our clients to review the asset manager’s own business practices. Topics covered include diversity and inclusion at the manager / GP level, but go further to generate data and analysis around matters such as environmental practices, training and recruitment policies, and whether a manager has had #metoo claims or has been subject to other workplace (mis)behaviour issues.

Responsible Investment Strategy (“RIS”) is a full scope diligence process where Castle Hall conducts a comprehensive review of an asset manager’s practices to integrate ESG into the investment decision making process. Our process considers the adequacy of ESG internal and external resources, and whether there is actual evidence of ESG factors being considered in investment decisions.

We have created a dedicated website at ESGDiligence.com, and also have a weekly ESG newsletter - please feel free to sign up if you have not already done so to receive our latest insights across the ever growing ESG space. 

Cybersecurity Due Diligence

Finally, Castle Hall has developed a dedicated cyber security due diligence program. Solarwinds, of course, is just the most recent evidence that hacking and information security are key topics for asset managers. 

Our cyber diligence report brings more detail than a “standard” OpsReview to enable our clients to gain a more granular understanding of the information security policies, procedures and resources adopted by asset managers. 

Once more, we have a dedicated cyber website at cybersecuritydiligence.com if you would like to learn more.

As always, we greatly appreciate your business and your ongoing confidence in Castle Hall as your due diligence partner. Please do not hesitate to contact me directly, or reach out to any member of our team with questions, comments or suggestions as to how we can continue to improve our support and service to you and your firm.

Chris Addy, CEO