RSM, the global tax and accounting firm with many family-office clients, has formed a strategic partnership with Arch, a software company that helps investors manage documents and data related to their private equity, venture capital and other alternative investments.
The partnership, which came together late last year, is essentially a new enterprise software agreement between the two companies. Both count large banks, private wealth managers and family offices as clients and, in the future, RSM will either include Arch in the services it offers or they can choose to add it.
RSM is not an investor in Arch, but the companies plan to collaborate more closely and are forming a joint go-to-market strategy.
“We’re committed to being a digitally driven firm, where transformative innovation is at the heart of all we do. Through our work with Arch, we’re equipping our team with a robust digital infrastructure that modernizes internal processes and creates new opportunities to deliver cutting-edge, personalized services to our clients in a fast-evolving digital world,” Matt Bradvica, partner and tax digital strategy leader at RSM, said in a statement.
RSM previously had a similar partnership with an Arch competitor, Canoe Intelligence, a person familiar with the relationships told Modus.
Canoe said it still integrates with RSM’s FamilySight platform, and the companies continue to share customers. The company declined to comment on RSM’s engagement with Arch.
“While front-end user experience is increasingly important, Canoe focuses on providing the robust data infrastructure required for sophisticated investment reporting and operational efficiency at scale. We provide data peace of mind, ensuring our clients can rely on the accuracy and integrity of their investment data," Mike Muniz, chief strategy officer at Canoe, told Modus.
RSM said it could not comment on its relationship with Canoe before press time.
Canoe started in 2013 within Portage Partners, the single-family office of investor Michael Leffell. It now works directly with over 100 family offices and more than 1,000 total through relationships it has with Cambridge Associates, Solovis, J.P. Morgan, Archway (SEI’s family office business recently acquired by the private equity firm Aquiline) and other firms, the company said. Last summer, Canoe raised $36 million in a Series C round of funding led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and from existing investors, including F-Prime Capital and Eight Roads.
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TAKE THE SURVEYStrategic partnerships can help companies engage family offices, which are growing in number but can be challenging to connect and build relationships with. (Last fall, Deloitte estimated there were 8,030 single-family offices worldwide and that there will be 10,720 by 2030.) Still, depending on the office, adding even a handful of them as customers could be significant to a business. Most offices have investment portfolios with hundreds of millions of dollars of assets or more and they can easily spend a total of over $100,000 per year on software alone.
Arch is also venture-backed. In November of 2023, it raised $20 million in a Series A round of funding led by Menlo Ventures and with previous investors Craft Ventures, Quiet Capital, Carta, Citi Ventures, and Focus Financial Partners. It works with 150 single-family offices and other clients, including four of the 20 largest private banks, the company said.
The new partnership with RSM will make its software more available to a broader group of customers with whom it has fewer direct relationships.
“This gives us a different type of client to work with that also supports a similar type of organization. There's a lot of good potential there,” Ryan Eisenman, co-founder and CEO at Arch, told Modus.
