Conway Investment Solutions and private markets wealth tech platform Opto Investments formed a strategic partnership to provide RIAs access to bespoke, actively managed private market vintage funds. These will primarily involve curated fund of funds involving several different fund managers. The partnership will allow RIAs to offer clients private market investments at lower minimums.
According to Opto CEO Ryan VanGorder, while the underlying funds will usually require investment minimums in the millions of dollars, the Conway/Opto partnership will allow RIAs to invest at minimums that will tend to be closer to $100,000.
“That will give them diversification across multiple funds that would normally each have hurdles or minimum ticket sizes which are way larger than that,” said VanGorder.
The funds, curated by the two firms, will be made available through a simplified digital subscription process. One of Opto’s APIs will be able to access the RIA’s CRM system and pull data from the RIA’s client book to auto-fill the necessary documents, cutting down on the time it might take to execute transactions manually.
“We are bringing full private markets coverage from an Opto perspective and tech-enabled due diligence and research, which complements the very comprehensive and robust research that Conway performs,” said VanGorder. “And then Conway extends into the hedge fund space, and they have a hedge fund platform that rounds out more of a broader alts offering for underlying clients.”
Andersen Tax LLC, a tax, valuation and financial advisory firm, became one of the first clients to take advantage of the partnership. Conway and Opto launched a balanced private markets vintage fund strategy for their ultra-high-net-worth, high-net-worth and family office clients.
“This powerful alliance between Andersen, Conway and Opto will equip our advisors with value-add investment strategies to complement existing equity and fixed-income portfolios,” said Brian Ullsperger, managing director at Andersen, in a statement. Ullsperger’s team has $2 billion in AUM.
Opto, whose platform aims to give wealth managers access to private market investments, added custom fund capabilities last fall. This gave RIA clients the option to create white label funds ranging from those focusing on private equity or debt to infrastructure. Company co-founder and Chief Solutions Officer Jake Miller discussed Opto’s goals for the wealth channel and the importance of a fiduciary-first approach in managing private market investments on a recent episode of the Wealth Management Invest Podcast.
