The asset management industry has undergone profound change in recent years, across products, distribution channels, and regulatory frameworks. Yet one thing remains unchanged: the subscription journey. This is not a minor oversight.
At a time when Europe is driving the democratization of investment through ELTIF 2, that journey is becoming a structural bottleneck. Digitizing subscription is no longer a question of opportunity. It is an operational and business imperative.
A Model Built for a Handful of Investors
For decades, the model worked seamlessly: a few hundred subscribers, ticket sizes often exceeding one million euros, distribution handled by wealth managers and private banks. In that context, manual processes were acceptable. Low volume meant no urgency to digitize.
ELTIF 2, which came into effect on January 10, 2024, changed that equation. By lowering the minimum investment threshold to €10,000, the European regulation opens investment funds to an entirely new class of investors[1].
The arithmetic consequence is straightforward: an asset manager overseeing 200 to 500 investors today could be managing 50,000 tomorrow. That shift in scale makes the current operational model unsustainable. What can be managed manually at a small scale simply cannot be managed at all at a large one, without a direct impact on costs and service quality.
Lemonway has already supported this transformation, most notably for its crowdfunding platform partners, which now manage tens of thousands of investors with average ticket sizes of €3,000[2]. Asset management will need to follow suit. The difference is that it is starting from further behind.
The Real Point of Friction: Subscription and fundraising
Subscribing to a fund today means navigating a series of invisible friction points: paper or PDF forms exchanged by email, manual verifications, processing times of 5 to 10 days, and the constant risk of reconciliation errors.
According to a Fenergo study of 450 asset management executives, 72% acknowledge that their KYC processes are manual and their fundraising cumbersome[3]. 74% have lost investors due to a poor onboarding experience[4].
Within this two part challenge (KYC, fundraising), it is the last element that is most consistently underestimated. With thousands of subscribers and multiple intermediaries (wealth managers, private banks, platforms), payment reconciliation becomes the critical nerve center of the entire operation. A poorly reconciled capital call or a misallocated fee is a minor incident at small scale. At large scale, it becomes a systemic risk.
There is also a regulatory dimension. Payment is inseparable from anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF) requirements: the origin of funds must be verified, flows must be traceable. Integrating payment into the subscription journey does not add compliance burden. It turns compliance into a conversion enabler.
Why the Industry Has Not Yet Made the Shift
The primary resistance is not technical. It is cultural. Asset managers worry that by digitizing their subscription process, and thereby reaching investors directly, they will bypass their distribution networks. Wealth managers are compensated for sourcing investors. Going direct risks alienating the industry's primary commercial channel.
That concern is understandable. It is also outdated. In the crowdfunding space, wealth managers account for 15% of fundraising on French platforms[5]. Coexistence is not only possible, it is the norm. Digitizing subscription does not replace distributors. It automates their compensation, makes flows more reliable, and simplifies their work.
The other obstacle is more diffuse: the perception that digitization is too complex, that the right tools do not exist, that the ROI has not been proven. In reality, the status quo conceals a high operational cost, one that the surge in subscriber numbers driven by ELTIF 2 will make painfully visible.
Digitizing: Automating, Securing, Accelerating
A digitized subscription means unified KYC (including for legal entities such as holding companies and family offices, in which case it is referred to as KYB), a unified payment process, and automated reconciliation. The gains are measurable: onboarding time drops from 5 to 10 days to 24 to 48 hours[6], and completing a subscription form goes from several hours to a few minutes.
But the transformation goes beyond operations. It also reshapes distribution. When flows are structured digitally, intermediary compensation is automated as well. What was once a source of administrative friction becomes a competitive advantage: fee attribution is traceable, compliant with MiFID transparency requirements, and requires no manual intervention. Automated flow management improves the oversight of the entire value chain. There is also a broader market reality. Today's investors, including those in funds, expect the same seamless experience they get on any financial platform. The enthusiasm for crypto assets is not just about returns. It is also about accessibility and speed. Funds, even those structured around ten-year investment horizons, must align with those expectations to attract the next generation of investors.
Not Digitizing: A Strategic Risk
Crowdfunding platforms have already onboarded 450,000 investors in three years[7]. Aggregators such as Allfunds, valued at €5.3 billion as part of its announced acquisition by Deutsche Börse in January 2026[8], offer online access to a broad range of funds. These players understood the need to digitize. They acted on it. And they are now capturing the client relationship that asset managers never sought to build digitally.
The risk is that of the manufacturer in a market dominated by digital distributors: losing direct proximity to the subscriber, and with it the ability to build a brand, foster loyalty, and grow. The French asset management market represents approximately €40 billion in annual fundraising[9], twenty times the size of crowdfunding. The window is wide open. Established players retain real strengths: expertise, credibility, and track record. But execution speed is becoming a decisive differentiator.
Payment as the Entry Point for Transformation
Digitizing the subscription journey is not simply a matter of improving the user interface. It engages the organization, the distribution model, and the underlying business model. And it is payment, long treated as a commodity, that sits at the center of it all: compliance, frictionless execution, reconciliation, and fee distribution.
At Lemonway, we have been operating this infrastructure for several years across hundreds of crowdfunding platforms throughout the EU. The technology is proven, and the expertise is transferable. What is changing is the scale of the market now being addressed, and the urgency of acting.
Those who structure their flows today will build a lasting advantage. Not by working against their network, but alongside it.
[1] European Regulation ELTIF 2, Regulation (EU) 2023/606 of the European Parliament and of the Council, applicable from January 2024.
[2] Lemonway internal data, based on client platform activity.
[3] Fenergo, "KYC in Asset Management", 2024. Study conducted with 450 asset management executives.
[4] Ibid., Fenergo, 2024.
[5] Lemonway internal data.
[6] Based on industry benchmarks, including McKinsey & Company; see also Centralised Business KYC: A Game Changer for Asset Managers, August 2024.
[7] Lemonway internal data, aggregated across the client platform portfolio.
[8] Joint press release, Deutsche Börse Group and Allfunds Group, January 21, 2026. The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to close in the first half of 2027.
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