Investment teams are spending too much time on coordination

Across the board, investment professionals are spending less time on investment analysis and more on something far less strategic: coordination.

Our recent study, based on user surveys with investment professionals with 1–6 years of experience, revealed a clear pattern. As portfolios grow more complex and ownership structures evolve, managing those structures is becoming an increasingly time-consuming part of the job.

Outsource coordination, not the thinking

As ownership structures become more complex, investment teams risk spending more time on coordination than on actual investment work. Rather than leveraging tools and support teams to handle the operational load, many professionals find themselves deep in the weeds of ownership administration—leaving less room for the kind of strategic thinking that adds real value.

Ownership management has become a hidden tax on the modern investment professional’s time.

Up to a day per week—just on ownership

Most investment professionals we interviewed reported spending between 2 to 4 hours per week on ownership-related admin. But for those managing larger or more complex ownership programs, the workload can stretch to nearly a full day each week.

That time is spent on:

• Communicating with stakeholders and responding to ad hoc Q&A

• Managing and sharing ownership lists

• Tracking shareholder changes and updates

• Coordinating documentation for reporting, structure charts, and legally compliant registers

While final reporting often falls to CFOs or legal counsel, investment teams remain responsible for much of the coordination. Workload spikes typically occur during major transactions—especially capital injections that require pro rata offers to all existing shareholders.

But even seemingly routine events, like a leaver being repurchased, can create just as much friction. If documentation and data aren’t readily accessible, a simple transaction can trigger hours of digging, updating, and syncing across spreadsheets and PDFs.

Excel and Word were never built for this

Most of the professionals we spoke to were managing ownership through a patchwork of Excel sheets and Word docs. It worked—until it didn’t. As the ownership base grew, the approach quickly became unsustainable. Manual equity management was slow, costly, and error-prone.

Purpose-built workflows cut admin by up to 60%

After adopting Centi, the users handling the largest programs reported a 60% reduction in time spent. What once took a full day per week now takes less than a day every other week.

Centi’s purpose-built workflows are modular, designed to fit how each team works. Automation kicks in where it adds value, while manual reviews remain available where control is key. Everything runs through one system.

The real unlock: trust in your data

The biggest benefit cited? Confidence.

Having everything in one place—data, documents, transaction history—gives teams peace of mind. They know the information is always up to date, and they can respond quickly whether it’s for a quarterly report, a pro rata offer, a repurchase, or simply stakeholder communication.

Ownership management shouldn’t slow you down. With Centi, it doesn’t have to.