Alternative real estate investment manager scaling compliance alongside investor growth

Urban Partners is an alternative investment fund manager licensed in Luxembourg. With a parent entity based in Denmark, Urban Partners’ funds invest primarily in real estate and companies across the real estate equity.

Mathias Sachse Skrubbeltrang has worked at Urban Partners for over six years, sitting within the organization’s legal team and currently holding the role of Senior Legal Counsel at the Danish parent entity.

Outdated KYC processes, manual record management

Back in early 2020, Urban Partners’ KYC processes were totally paper based. Physical questionnaires were sent, completed by hand, and then these documents (along with passport copies) were scanned and uploaded to Sharepoints. Not only did this process take up a considerable amount of time for Mathias and his team, but also for investors. If an error was found on a form, the relevant investor would need to complete the entire form again - rather than just correct the specific mistake. The KYC experience for investors was therefore less than ideal. 

Manual creation and archiving of KYC folders were also problematic for the Urban Partners team. Individual folders were manually created and saved in Sharepoints, and if a company investor changed its name, it was difficult to find them. Manual maintenance and clean up also took up a lot of time: 

“We were completely lacking good, accessible data on our KYC records. For example, it was impossible to know when an investor’s passport was about to expire, unless we took the time to check manually.”

When Mathias joined the organization, he quickly sought to implement more efficient, digital processes. He immediately set to work on creating an electronic version of all questionnaires, which eventually eased the KYC burden somewhat. However, KYC still took up 20% of Mathias’ working week.

Additionally, screening on investors was carried out in a separate third-party tool, which further fragmented the workflow. Mathias knew that there was an opportunity to optimize how Urban Partners managed KYC. 

Carrying out KYC on staff investors

Fast forward to 2025 and the company’s KYC workload suddenly increased significantly. In order to demonstrate to investors that the Urban Partners team has full belief and confidence in its investments, the organization offers staff the opportunity to co-invest. This requires KYC checks on all staff investors, and Mathias and his team were tasked with managing this extra workload.

The start of a lasting partnership with Avallone 

Then later on in the year of 2020, Urban Partners was serendipitously introduced to Avallone, which was in its early, yet well-formed stages of their KYC platform development.

“The benefits of using the Avallone product were instantly self-evident. We could see that Avallone would help us save a significant amount of time. As we were joining Avallone at such an early stage, we were also excited to collaborate on its product development.”

Urban Partners took the decision to bring Avallone on board and started using the KYC platform. And with Avallone’s KYC Collector tool, Urban Partners could now easily gather KYC-related data and documents from its 800+ investors. 

Enhanced investor experience through streamlined KYC collection and screening 

Having access to Avallone has revolutionized KYC collection for Urban Partners. It’s now so much easier to collect KYC from investors, staff investors, and other counterparties. 

“The KYC Collector has made collecting KYC so much easier for us. Everything is in one database, so it’s easy to see if we already hold information on a specific person - and we can have the same person attached to several legal entities. The platform is also really intuitive, so everything takes less time than it did before.”

Mathias called out some specific Avallone features that have been invaluable to him and his team. Previously, it was difficult for the team to collect KYC if there were several UBOs - as their paper forms were inflexible and didn’t allow for alternate scenarios or structures. Now with the KYC Collector’s digital platform, if a counterparty had additional UBOs, it could be added without any issues or extra work in just a few seconds. Avallone’s AI-powered questionnaire engine with their KYC Responder has also been a game-changer, reusing previous answers to ensure consistency and save time. 

Improved investor communications and experience

Using Avallone has improved the KYC process for both external and staff investors. Sharing information and documents now takes much less time than before, and correcting errors is seamless. For example, if an investor makes a mistake on one part of the collection process, they can be easily directed to correct the specific section. Previously, investors would have needed to re-complete the entire form.

Additionally, the intuitive user experience on Avallone ensures a positive KYC process for all staff and investors. 

“Even though many of our people hate KYC - they love using Avallone. For investors who already know how KYC works, it takes so much less time for them to give us what we need. And for the investors that need more help, such as our staff investors who have less knowledge on specific KYC requirements (such as FATCA), it’s easy for us to help them with the form using branded communications sent via the Avallone platform.”

Mathias explained that sending messages through the Avallone platform, that are branded to show the communication is from Urban Partners, enables KYC to be completed in a more professional, streamlined way:

“Contacting people through the platform, rather than from our work emails, gives the process and the messaging more authority. The communications that the investors receive still have a personal message from me, but with its branding, it's clear that any requests for information and/or clarification comes from the company as a whole. We find that sending it via the platform makes it even more professional and demonstrates our focus on quality to investors.”

Screening processes streamlined in one single tool

Previously, investor screening was carried out manually and in a third-party tool separate from Urban Partners’ collection processes. This meant that information was fragmented across at least two separate platforms, requiring multiple logins and inefficient transfer of data. Not only was this unproductive, but it also meant that there was potentially a greater risk of error and inconsistent decision-making. Now, everything is taken care of within Avallone, with screening and collection data stored seamlessly in one tool:

“Now, everything related to KYC is in one single place. We love that Avallone is a one stop shop for all things KYC.”

Urban Partners’ Luxembourg office also sanction-screens its many thousands of tenants using Avallone. By connecting to Avallone’s API, Urban Partners sends information from its rent roll directly into the platform, screening 11,000 tenants per day. This work would be impossible to carry out manually, and so it adds an extra layer of compliance and risk mitigation for the organization. The Luxembourg office has been so impressed with Avallone that they have decided to import all their legacy screening data into the platform and make Avallone the organization’s only screening tool going forward.  

50% time saved

As a result of using Avallone, Mathias estimates that the time he spends on KYC has been halved! A reduction from 20% of his working week to just 10%.

• Tapping into automation has erased the need to repeat or duplicate tasks unnecessarily.

• Investor communication is much easier with all messages centralized in one tool. 

• It’s much easier to maintain and clean up KYC records, for example by taking advantage of automated notifications when a document (such as an investor’s passport) is about to expire.

Better data security and regulatory compliance

Now, Urban Partners has just one hub for all of its KYC records. Not only are entities easier to find and maintain, but Mathias feels confident that they are stored in a compliant way: 

“It was very important for us to have a GDPR-compliant ‘safe space’ for all our KYC data and documents. We love the fact that Avallone does this for us.”

Avallone enables Urban Partners to fulfil its regulatory obligations - all communications are recorded within the platform, and every action has a full audit trail. If Mathias needs to find a specific interaction, he no longer needs to search through email chains and Sharepoints.

Collaboration with KYC experts

Mathias appreciates the fact that, through Avallone, he has access to knowledge and insights from highly experienced bank compliance professionals such as Avallone Co-founder and CEO Anders Meinert Jørgensen and Sune Warberg Clausen (VP of Financial Crime Prevention and Customer Success):

“Whenever we have a difficult or unusual KYC question, it’s super helpful to be able to run it by a KYC expert such as Anders Meinert Jørgensen or Sune Warberg Clausen.”

Mathias also values the opportunity to provide feedback on the product, and shape its development: 

“Our ideas for new products and features are always well-received by the team. Very often, I’ll see features released in the Avallone platform that we’ve suggested. And whether they’re able to act on our feedback or not, they take the time to listen and consider our requests. I’m well aware that another software provider might not be so open to our feedback!”

In one of many examples, Mathias sent a request to Avallone’s product team to develop the ability to edit meta data on documents - and Avallone delivered. Now, if people fail to write expiry dates on passport records, the Urban Partners team can edit it themselves. Mathias says:

“The ability to edit meta data on documents has been a great help for us and our investors. We’re so grateful that Avallone listened to our feedback and acted on it quickly.”

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In Conclusion:

Streamlining KYC processes with Avallone optimized Urban Partners’ cost and resource management

In Mathias’ own words:

“Avallone has shown that we can save a lot of time and do KYC even better than before.”

Mathias and his colleagues have saved time in their working week, boosted compliance, and totally transformed their KYC processes.  Avallone has therefore supported Urban Partners’s organizational objective of optimizing internal costs and resources: 

“If it hadn’t been for Avallone, we would have needed to add to our headcount in some way, which wouldn’t have been cost-efficient for us. Avallone therefore helps us to reach our organizational goal to optimize resources as much as possible.”

Even though Urban Partners hasn’t yet taken up the opportunity of outsourcing work to Avallone’s Services with their Financial Crime Prevention Team, Mathias is reassured that this is always an available option. With this knowledge in mind, Mathias doesn’t feel pressure to recruit in case of a sudden increase in workload - whether it’s related to an uptake in volume or a need for financial crime prevention expertise. He knows that Avallone can support him, whatever the future holds.