Technology Survey of Long Term Investors: Board Package Process

In the first study of the investment teams’ activities centered around the preparation of the board package, a formal survey was conducted. Based on the response of $1 Trillion dollars of assets, on average, the respondents indicated a very difficult process taking 10 man-days each quarter, utilizing Five Full Time Employees (FTE) to produce, and boasting 108 pages. It is estimated that the exercise costs each investment office the equivalent of 80% of one FTE’s cost per year. As part of the study, we enumerate the typical investment offices processes, and further analyze the Board Package Process/workflow. This study is unique in its approach in applying quantitative methods to analyze an extremely qualitative process. In what is believed to be the first application of Artificial Intelligence to analyze textual comments in the long term investment world, IBM Watson’s sentiment analytics technology was used to gain insights into the emotions expressed by respondents. This paper provides valuable context and data to help investment staff and technology providers better understand the issues and work together toward creating a better solution.