Using AI to Transform Sub-Advisor Oversight, Fund Management, and Board Engagement
Summary
Rising oversight expectations are colliding with manual processes, creating operational strain, delayed Board readiness, and increased regulatory risk across sub-advisor diligence, fund management, and the 15c process.
Purpose-built AI is transforming oversight workflows, centralizing and continuously analyzing diligence data across investment, operational, legal, and compliance functions to replace episodic, manual reviews.
AI enables insight-driven fund management, shifting teams from reactive reporting to proactive oversight with faster risk identification, standardized reporting, and reduced reliance on spreadsheets and manual reconciliation.
Board engagement is evolving with AI-powered reporting, delivering Board-ready summaries, real-time and permissioned Q&A access, and greater transparency, confidence, and defensibility, especially during 15c reviews.
When built for investment management, AI becomes a strategic lever, driving meaningful efficiency gains, stronger governance, and improved regulatory alignment without scaling cost or complexity.
The expectations placed on fund managers, compliance teams, and Boards have never been higher. Sub-advisor oversight is expanding, regulatory scrutiny continues to intensify, and Boards increasingly expect faster, clearer, and more data-driven insights. This is particularly the case across fund performance, fees, risks, and service-provider oversight. Yet many firms are still relying on highly manual, fragmented processes to manage diligence, reporting, and governance.
AI technology is now reshaping this landscape.
Purpose-built AI solutions for investment management are enabling firms to move beyond labor-intensive workflows toward automated, insight-driven oversight and reporting, transforming how sub-advisors are evaluated, how funds are managed, and how Boards engage with information, including throughout the 15c process.
The Challenge: Manual Oversight in a High-Expectation Environment
Sub-advisor diligence and fund oversight impact nearly every function within an organization, including investment, operations, legal, compliance, finance, and risk. In many firms, the underlying data needed to support these reviews lives in disconnected systems, spreadsheets, shared drives, and email threads. To further complicate the matter, there is a series of dependencies on disparate internal and external teams and service providers that provide the necessary information.
As a result:
Data collection is repetitive and time-consuming, causing delays and missed deadlines
Manually reconciling across teams is error-prone and a challenge for data accuracy
Board reporting becomes a backward-looking exercise rather than a strategic one
Critical insights are buried in documents instead of surfaced for decision-makers
This creates operational strain, delays Board readiness, and increases regulatory and reputational risk, especially when oversight expectations are rising.
AI as a New Foundation for Sub-Advisor Oversight
AI is being deployed to redesign how sub-advisor diligence and fund oversight operate fundamentally. Rather than starting from scratch each cycle, AI enables firms to centralize, normalize, and continuously analyze diligence data across investment, operational, legal, and compliance domains.
Key capabilities include:
Automated data collection and normalization from questionnaires, documents, policies, and historical reviews
Ongoing monitoring that keeps diligence current rather than episodic
AI-driven analysis identifies immediate red flags as well as overall trends, gaps, and emerging risks across sub-advisors and funds
The result is a living, continuously updated oversight framework, one that supports both internal management needs and external governance requirements.
Elevating Fund Management with Insight-Driven Workflows
Beyond diligence, AI is increasingly embedded into day-to-day fund management workflows. By connecting underlying data across teams, AI allows management to move from reactive reporting to proactive oversight.
This enables:
Faster identification of operational, performance, or compliance risks
Consistent, standardized reporting across funds and sub-advisors
Reduced dependency on manual reviews and spreadsheet reconciliation
More time for teams to focus on analysis and decision-making, not data wrangling
AI becomes a force multiplier, turning oversight functions from cost centers into strategic enablers.
Transforming Board Engagement and the 15c Process
Board engagement is also evolving. Directors are no longer satisfied with static board books assembled weeks in advance. They expect clarity, transparency, and the ability to ask deeper questions, especially during the 15c review process.
AI is enabling a new model of Board interaction by:
Generating Board-ready reporting with clear summaries, benchmarks, and supporting evidence
Providing real-time, secure, and permissioned Q&A access to underlying data
Allowing management to respond quickly to Board questions without manual rework
Enhancing confidence in the accuracy, consistency, and defensibility of information
Instead of overwhelming Boards with volume, AI helps surface what matters most—insights, trends, and risks—while maintaining full transparency back to the source data.
AI as a Strategic Lever for Efficiency and Regulatory Alignment
Perhaps most importantly, AI is no longer just a productivity tool. When built for purpose within investment management, it becomes a strategic lever for both operational efficiency and regulatory alignment.
Firms leveraging AI are seeing:
Meaningful reductions in time spent on diligence, reporting, and Board preparation
Greater consistency and auditability across oversight processes
Stronger alignment between management, compliance, and Board expectations
Improved readiness for evolving regulatory scrutiny
In an environment where oversight demands are only increasing, AI offers a path to scale governance without scaling cost or complexity.
The Future
As sub-advisor oversight, fund management, and Board engagement continue to converge, AI will play an increasingly central role in how firms operate. The future is not about replacing judgment; it’s about equipping teams and Boards with better information, faster access, and deeper insight.
Firms that embrace AI-driven, insight-first workflows today will be better positioned to meet tomorrow’s regulatory expectations, strengthen governance, and deliver more effective oversight across their investment platforms.
