Opto Investments, a private markets tech platform for wealth management firms, has launched a new tool called Planner.
Now available to firms on the platform, Planner is meant to simplify the process of investing in long-term private markets. It assists advisors in determining the appropriate allocations for target private markets and in devising an investment pacing strategy that is personalized to each client.
As with many aspects of alternative investing, little technology has been available to date to help firms with the more granular aspects of planning such investments.
“A lot of times, there was no software to support them, and advisors often had to follow their own firm’s best practices—and perhaps work through and track these processes on spreadsheets,” all too often resulting in a one-off process that simply does not scale, said Opto CEO Ryan VanGorder,
According to VanGorder, Planner supports three major steps in private market investing. The first is helping the advisor think through what targets make the most sense for a given client based on their age, existing financial plan and investments, time horizon, goals etc., by applying sophisticated analytics. Next, the tool assists the advisor in aligning the level of risk inherent in an investment with that of the client. Third, it determines the optimal pacing strategy or how to ramp up long-term investments over time.
Advisors can select target allocations by leveraging their firm’s model portfolios through custom funds crafted in partnership with Opto. In Opto parlance, a custom fund is a single, fully tailored and white-labeled fund composed of multiple underlying private funds that a firm can onboard and manage using the company’s platform.
Opto has developed native API integrations with the major reporting engines used by wealth management firms, making it easy for firms to bring these investments into their own reporting systems and vice versa.
The company launched its custom fund capabilities a year ago. As part of that process, Opto completes the due diligence, offers an opinion on the underlying investments and uses its own capital and balance sheet to back the investments.
Opto Investments was co-founded by serial entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale (also founder of Addepar and co-founder of Palantir) and five others. It emerged from stealth mode in September 2022 when it announced $145 million in Series A funding and is now working with more than 250 RIA firms.
“The Planner enables advisors to clearly demonstrate to clients how private markets can help them achieve their goals within the context of their total portfolio—and then lays out the steps to get there,” said Eytan Schindelhaim, head of product at Opto Investments in a statement.
