Labor-Owned Investment Company Gains Significant Operational Efficiencies with NAV Custom Solutions
Client
Ullico
Background
As the only labor-owned insurance and investment company, Ullico Inc. has protected and help grow the North American labor movement for nearly a century with world-class insurance and investment products for union members, union leaders and union benefit funds. Ullico Investment Advisors (“UIA”) offers a range of asset management services and union-friendly investment strategies through its affiliated broker-dealer Ullico Investment Company, LLC (“UIC”), to better meet the needs of institutional and tax-exempt investors and their consultants. With $10.6 billion AUM as of December 31, 2023, UIA focuses on commercial real estate debt, infrastructure, real estate equity, fixed income, and international equity investment strategies. UIA and UIC Chief Operating Officer Cathy A. Humphrey works closely with the NAV team and is responsible for the staff and activities associated with all back office functions and new product development.
How NAV Helped
Improved Investor Statements
Challenge
UIA requested enhancements to its investor statements to offer investors more comprehensive fund and transaction data.
Solution
NAV leveraged its flexible, proprietary technology to meet UIA’s robust statement requirements.
Outcome
“For our largest private fund, we requested a capital account summary since inception to be displayed on our investor statements and NAV was able to create reporting templates that met our needs,” Humphrey said. “We also asked for holdings summaries for each investor. NAV now treats each capital call as a separate tax lot and maintains this data for each investor. In addition, we wanted to include a transaction summary for each period for each investor statement, which NAV was able to accomplish for us.”
Resource-Intensive Call and Distribution Notice Preparation
Challenge
UIA was preparing all call and distribution notices in-house, which was time consuming, required significant staffing, and had potential for errors.
Solution
NAV automated the process of call and distribution notice creation and dissemination.
Outcome
“When we expressed to NAV that our in-house system was inefficient, the NAV team explained they had a proven system already in use for other clients to auto-generate call and distribution notices. We were able to work with them to design a system specific to our needs and free up substantial staff hours for other projects,” Humphrey said.
Document Distribution Process Improvement
Challenge
To meet various regulatory requirements, UIA had been leveraging a proprietary CRM to email a variety of documents including SIPC, ERISA disclosures, Form ADV, audited financials, K-1's, quarterly commentaries, estimates, and GIPS reports to its investors. Each mailing distribution list contained specific contacts for each client.
Solution
NAV’s proprietary client delivery system has enabled UIA to streamline their document distribution process and reduce the burden on in-house resources.
Outcome
“NAV offered a better all-in-one solution for us,” Humphrey said. “The NAV system helped us significantly improve quality, enhance the security measures already in place, increase network and staff efficiency, and gave us the ability to maintain distribution logs for better access to records.”
Simplified, Accurate Process Needed for Distribution of Management Fee Invoices
Challenge
Due to the complexity of their structure of some of its products, UIA spent a large amount of resources to ensure that management fee invoices were accurate.
Solution
NAV created an invoice format per UIA’s requirements and set up a smooth distribution process. After UIA approved the format, they asked NAV to implement it across all of their funds.
Outcome
“Some of our funds have intricate management fee structures that required involvement from several in-house teams in order to issue invoices. NAV was able to automate the process for us, allowing our teams to review management fee calculations for all of our funds. The new process not only freed up time and resources for our teams to focus on other priorities and projects, but also facilitated the distribution of invoices at the same time as investor statements,” Humphrey said.
Data Consolidation to Compile and Update Monthly Report
Challenge
UIA’s senior management required a detailed book of business report for review on a monthly basis.
Solution
NAV developed a custom data report that UIA can reference to create a key monthly report for senior management.
Outcome
“The firm’s senior management team reviews a book of business (“BoB”) report monthly, including the AUM of each investor of each fund and all transactions for the period,” Humphrey said. “We asked NAV to analyze and replicate the raw data file to give us a single source to map to for all of the necessary underlying data. NAV created a custom format for us so we can update and distribute our executive BoB report much more efficiently.”
Lengthy Investor Reports
Challenge
Investor reports included unnecessary information.
Solution
NAV worked with UIA’s operations team to consolidate and streamline report data.
Outcome
“Our investor reports were 13 pages long in some instances,” Humphrey said. “We collaborated with the NAV team to identify the information we really needed and they were able to reduce our reports to two pages that are much more concise and easier for investors to review.”
Multiple Service Providers
Challenge
UIA had been using multiple software service providers in addition to devoting many in-house hours to administrative functions.
Solution
NAV offered a suite of services and a highly skilled team to address many of UIA’s needs with a single service contract.
Outcome
“NAV’s ability to handle all of our needs in one place has saved our company time and resources, which we can now invest elsewhere.” Humphrey said.
