Tech-focused custodian Altruist has added alternative assets to its platform, along with margin, options and faster money movement. With the move, the firm joins a crowded field of companies seeking to streamline private market investments in the wealth channel.
At launch, Altruist’s alternatives marketplace includes strategies across private equity, real estate and infrastructure from Blackstone, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, KKR and Pantheon.
Altruist’s pitch is that, unlike standalone alternative asset platforms, which require coordinating through different investor portals, advisors can “prepare and send clients documents for review and signature, and manage reporting and billing—all without leaving the platform.”
“Advisors are competing for clients who want access to private markets, more personalized strategies and flexible ways to manage liquidity,” Altruist CEO and founder Jason Wenk said in a statement. “Until now, delivering that access often meant working across multiple systems and inefficient workflows. We’ve built these capabilities directly into the Altruist platform so advisors can run their best practice in one streamlined experience.”
Alternative strategy data on Altruist flows into client portfolios, and clients can see them alongside their traditional assets and investments. Furthermore, Altruist is charging no custody fees for partner funds at launch.
The platform will also introduce margin loans for liquidity, options for income generation, and expanded money movement capabilities, including direct deposit, physical checkbooks and third-party digital check distributions.
With the move, Altruist joins an industry-wide effort to streamline the private market investment process in the wealth channel.
For example, traditional investment players, such as Envestnet, InvestCloud, SEI, Orion, Alladin Wealth and Vestmark have bolstered their platforms by adding private market functionality as well as integrations with specialist private market platforms such as iCapital and CAIS.
Specialty private-market tech firms like Subscribe, Arch, Gridline and Opto have also sought to ease the alternative investment process by streamlining subscription processes, ongoing management and liquidity events.
The move is also the latest in a series of recent platform updates for Altruist.
Last month, it launched a beta of a new model that gives advisors access to the compliance, custody and operational infrastructure.
Earlier this year it launched artificial intelligence-powered tax planning within Hazel, causing a selloff in traditional wealth management stocks.
In March, Wenk added that Altruist would launch a new AI agent every quarter this year.