Cushman & Wakefield Goes Blockchain

Fintech company Inveniam Capital Partners, which describes itself in its press release as “offering proprietary data solutions to digitize and automate the middle-office for private assets,” announced that it would provide technology to Cushman & Wakefield to “further the global trading of private market assets with real-time data surveillance.”

Inveniam says it has an “operating system for data” that allows the technology to work with big data, doing analytics but without a data lake or database — without a single location where all the data must reside, which is the typical approach used, as the company’s website says. Instead, the data “sits on the edge.” Edge computing refers to distributed computing that brings processing to the sources of data, rather than requiring the data to be brought to the computing.

The company says this allows timely delivery of data on such “data-rich, low-frequency trading assets” like real estate, private equity, or infrastructure, which historically haven’t seen frequent mark to market valuation. The data can help in valuation and risk management on a quarterly, monthly, and weekly basis. Inveniam says that eventually they will be able to drive daily valuation.

“Cushman & Wakefield will use the proprietary Inveniam.io data operating system which is based on patented blockchain technology,” the press release said. “This will transform the way asset data is credentialed, extracted, structured and delivered for clients – providing better data quicker.”

Relatively rapid updating should make trading of such assets easier and also allow nearly real-time price discovery that is currently next to impossible to gain. The lack of ongoing price discovery has been one of the mechanisms that have slowed current CRE transaction levels and made it difficult for buyers, sellers, developers, and lenders to understand the current state of the market. That has resulted in more conservative practices as the only practical way to manage risk when there isn’t enough available data.

“The value being added by the Inveniam platform to our Valuations and Advisory business is only the beginning,” Sal Companieh, C&W’s Chief Digital & Information Officer, said in prepared remarks. “Our continuing V&A Digital Transformation will provide many other opportunities to benefit our clients across multiple businesses that depend in different ways on reliable data.”