David Canter, the former head of RIAs and family offices at Fidelity Institutional and ephemeral president of Bluespring Wealth Partners, has taken a role as strategic advisor to the digital alternatives platform CAIS.
Canter and CAIS CEO Matt Brown told WealthManagement.com this week they’ve been working together for the past three months to bring the service to more registered investment advisory firms through education, improved services, and Canter’s expertise, reputation and connections.
“I view this very much as a joint collaboration,” Canter said. “CAIS is a practice management platform that is in the alts business. Helping advisors grow and compete and succeed in the marketplace is what CAIS is all about. … and the alts platform that the firm has built is just the perfect manifestation of that.”
“Having someone like David, who has had a much broader lens with these firms on overall growth strategy, is a natural complement,” said Brown. “He can help advise our firm and me, personally, on the best way to interact with the RIA community and deepen our relationships there.
“Of course, David's network is obviously quite extensive and as we think about relationship building and becoming a real champion to the independent advisor, the insights that we get from that network are extremely useful,” he added.
The partnership is already bearing fruit. Canter "brought a more holistic approach" in recent conversations with “several substantial” RIAs who are now clients, according to Brown.
“We expect that trend to continue,” he said.
Founded in 2009, CAIS has often said education is the only barrier to adoption of its services and focused on that as a primary component of its marketing efforts over the last five years. The company has also made it easier for advisors to access and manage alternative investments, unveiling a software-as-a-service platform in the fall that enables advisors to aggregate and manage third-party investments alongside CAIS funds.
“If you really want to get at the core of helping advisors allocate to alternative investments, you really have to take on the education component,” Brown said. “We believe that if CAIS can be known as an education platform as well as an access platform, and as well as a technology solutions platform, that's the right way to go about it."
Brown expects 2024 to be a year of “tremendous adoption and growth,” for the company. He said RIAs have progressed from asking whether they needed to develop their own platform or outsource alternatives to asking how they can incorporate a good external platform to foster growth without massive internal costs.
Interest in alternatives is increasing among financial advisors, according to a recent survey conducted by CAIS and Mercer. With six in 10 allocating 6%-25% of client portfolios and eight in 10 expecting to increase allocations this year, the opportunity for growth is significant.
“We have thousands of advisors in this country that don't currently allocate to alts,” Brown said. “The No. 1 reason is their familiarity with the strategies, their comfort with speaking to their clients about alternatives, their knowledge and how to incorporate them in broader portfolios.
“If we can close that gap by being really an education platform as well, I think that's part of our mandate here.”
“These are professionals that are, day in and day out, putting their clients’ interests first,” Canter said. “They recognize the need to allocate to alternatives.”
A member of the CAIS Advisory Council since 2022, Canter worked with the company during his time at Fidelity and has been friends with Brown for a decade. He said he’s been gratified to see the company grow.
“I am just so really pleased to be aligned with an organization that champions the fee-based or the fee-only independent advisor community—the fiduciary-oriented advisor—whether it's in a pure RIA or a hybrid construct,” he told WealthManagement.com.
CAIS has no other strategic advisors and there is no shelf life on Canter's contract with the firm. While Canter’s one-man consultancy, Finley Point (named for the place he and his wife got married), may entertain other, non-conflicting partnerships in the wealth and asset management space, he said “the bulk” of his professional time will be dedicated to CAIS.
“I’ll work with CAIS as long as it will have me,” he said.
“Vice versa,” added Brown.
About his brief time with Bluespring, Canter said there are no hard feelings.
"I wish all my colleagues at every place I've ever worked only the best," he said. "Because we're all in this together."
