Ontra’s Insight, Powered By GPT-4, Simplifies Fund Management

Since the initial release of OpenAI’s GPT large language model in 2022, developments in generative AI have transformed how the professional services industry conducts business, presenting new avenues for increasing efficiency and shifting workflows.

Ontra, the leader in AI-powered private markets contract automation and intelligence, has long leveraged machine learning and AI for its products, including its cutting-edge Insight product. Now, however, the company has added GPT-4 capabilities to the AI that powers Insight, taking Insight’s ability to help private markets professionals manage fund and side letter obligations and compliance to the next level.

Above the Law recently spoke with Ontra’s SVP of Engineering, Eric Hawkins to learn more about how integrating GPT-4 into the Insight product bolsters the already powerful tool.

Transforming Contract Management in Private Markets With GPT-4

Traditionally, private markets firms managed key documents on paper, in PDF form, and in antiquated filing systems. With Insight and its addition of GPT-4, however, private markets professionals can access a digital repository of their key fund documents and no longer need to search through those PDF documents individually to surface core terms and information, according to Hawkins.

“Insight takes complex fund data and structures it in a way that makes it easy to find the answers to your questions, to compare provisions, to understand what you’ve agreed to, and what you have to comply with,” Hawkins explains.

“It empowers multiple teams to work and collaborate more efficiently and bolster firm compliance in the face of increasing regulatory scrutiny.”

Private markets professionals can search this structured repository of data, which includes limited partnership agreements, side letters, and other fund documents relevant to GPs’ obligations to investors, using the product’s SmartSearch feature. This feature empowers private markets professionals to quickly find and compare examples of past versions of a particular provision or agreement. Having that precedent on hand enables firms to negotiate better outcomes.

Delivering Better, Faster Workflows

Insight benefits private markets professionals by sorting and clustering the vast amount of data necessary for managing private funds. This allows not only for a single source of truth, but also for the development of better, more efficient workflows.

“Insight consolidates all of that information across your fund docs and then lets you, as a private equity or legal professional helping private funds, have a more consolidated view of your obligations and commitments and build efficient workflows that keep you compliant,” Hawkins explains. “It lets you be efficient relative to the things you have to do for your LPs in particular.”

Those better workflows can be built across multiple teams and can take into account variation between different versions of an agreement for different investors, Hawkins emphasizes.

He notes the ability to quickly pull up documents related to specific arrangements also allows private markets teams to stay agile during event-based occurrences that may trigger springing obligations. Additionally, he explains teams can integrate Insight into workflows relevant to every part of private fund management, from fundraising and MFN elections to ongoing investor and fund reporting and obligation management.

Hawkins also adds that teams can export data and reports from Insight, a feature he notes can be particularly helpful when asset managers prepare for mock and regular audits.

An AI Tool With A Human Touch

Unlike many technology companies that utilize only AI for their main products, Ontra draws on the skills of a dedicated network of legal and private markets professionals — called “human-in-the-loop” experts — as an extra set of eyes to review the accuracy and relevancy of AI outputs.

Private markets firms often begin by uploading fund documents via Insight to categorize and summarize the obligations contained therein. When this happens, as Hawkins explains, a specialist reviews and approves the obligations listed by Insight’s output, overriding, editing, or approving the suggestions as needed.

“We basically take all of this structured data from Insight and put it in front of one of our trusted humans-in-the-loop, and they can very quickly review this and reduce the time it takes to digitize agreements,” adds Hawkins.

“They can go through the whole document and can see the AI recommendations, then they can say ‘Yep, this looks right,’ or ‘This wasn’t quite right, let me touch it up a bit.’” he says. “Anybody can feed a document to ChatGPT, but storing and managing that data in a way that is useful to your firm is the magic that happens here.”

High Speed, High Security

When adopting any type of AI-based tool into day-to-day operations, security should be top of mind for any private markets firm.

The integration of GPT-4 into Insight was conducted with a focus on security.

“None of the data we use to prompt OpenAI models will ever be used [by OpenAI] in subsequent training runs,” Hawkins states. “As a customer of OpenAI, Ontra was able to implement zero data retention for our customers, which means the basic data uploaded when a customer prompts GPT is immediately forgotten by OpenAI.”

In addition to the agreement between Ontra and OpenAI, Insight also adheres to the SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria for Security, a security framework developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants to minimize the risk of data breaches.

To learn more about Ontra Insight or schedule a demo, visit https://www.ontra.ai/demo/