The development of businesses such as CAIS has a common theme of widening and speeding up access to alternative investments such as private equity, real estate, private credit and infrastructure.

CAIS, the US-based alternative investment platform which has been expanding rapidly in recent months, has been chosen by aggregator business Wealth Enhancement Group to provide a solution for its advisors.

Under the deal, CAIS will provide the firm with a customized platform solution. The deal is significant for CAIS: Wealth Enhancement Group has more than $57.7 billion in total client assets and over 360 advisors.

CAIS will provide access to an evolving menu of alternative investment funds and products, as well as educational resources, end-to-end digitized transaction processing, and third-party reporting integrations, creating a pre-trade, trade, and post-trade investing experience.

The development of businesses such as CAIS, Moonfare (Europe) and iCapital (US) has a common theme of widening and speeding up access to alternative investments such as private equity, real estate, private credit and infrastructure. In the past, these relatively illiquid investments have tended to be closed to those other than large institutions and ultra-high net worth clients. As more businesses stay private for longer, or don’t even float on the stock market at all, there is a need to capture returns from the private markets space.

As part of its arrangement, CAIS will also assist Wealth Enhancement Group by adding its own sourced third-party funds to the platform for centralized monitoring, transacting, and reporting, as well as launching proprietary feeder funds and multi-manager funds.

“With the addition of Wealth Enhancement Group, CAIS remains dedicated to empowering the nation’s leading RIA aggregators including Mariner Wealth Advisors, Focus Financial Partners, and Advisor Group,” Matt Brown, founder and CEO at CAIS, said. Family Wealth Report has interviewed Brown about the firm's strategy and business model here.

“As multiple factors fuel uncertainty throughout public markets, the need to equip independent advisors with access to quality alternative investments has never been greater,” Brown said.

CAIS cited figures showing that 69 per cent of financial professionals reported a lack of educational resources as a barrier to investing in private markets. The firm has an offering called CAIS IQ, a proprietary alternative investment education platform that helps advisors learn faster and retain information longer. CAIS IQ also allows home office professionals to monitor financial advisors’ learning progress across foundational, asset-class themed and fund-specific courses, some of which are available for CE credits.

In September, CAIS announced that it will be collaborating with Ares Wealth Management Solutions to take on board select Ares strategies and expand the latter firm’s reach to a wider audience of independent broker-dealers and registered investment advisors.

Earlier this year, Reverence Capital Partners made a $100 million capital investment into CAIS; this followed CAIS’s $225 million funding round in January led by Apollo, Motive Partners, and Franklin Templeton. That round took CAIS’s enterprise valuation above $1 billion.