Jul 30, 2025 - Last Updated: Aug 1, 2025
If you’re looking for strategies to help attract new investors and keep more AUM, you should consider adding alternative investments to your platform or offering. Why? Because the alts market is growing twice as fast as public assets and expected to reach up to $65T by 2032¹. Plus, the “Fair Investment Opportunities for Professional Experts Act” has already cleared one congressional hurdle. This bill is designed to expand the accredited investor definition — beyond wealth and income thresholds — to help more retail investors tap into this significant expansion of private markets.²
Of course, you know why you don’t currently offer or promote alts: The operational workflow has been fragmented, manual, arduous, and, frankly, may not be a financially sustainable business model for most firms. And the client experience is no better, with multiple logins, different interfaces, traditional assets statements, and a bevy of separate alternatives documents. To say nothing of advisory staff who don’t want to open Pandora’s box of more administrative work. Clearly, there’s a need for more education about the alts market for RIAs, broker-dealers, and their clients.
With Apex Alts, we’ve transformed alternative investments into a streamlined, unified process that can unlock alts access for ambitious firms looking for tech-forward competitive advantages. But we know you want to consider a few choices, so we’ll leave it to you to decide if our solution is right for you.
Use this checklist to evaluate your short list
As more and more “best” alternative investments platforms become available, it’s hard to cut through the marketing speak as the field gets more and more crowded and there is more noise than clarity. That’s why we’ve put together this checklist of alternative asset custodian features that cover the full alternative investments subscription lifecycle. Use it to dig into the details so you can more easily compare the providers you’re considering, whether they include alts custodians, platforms, or a combination of alternative point solutions.
Checklist: Find your best alternative investments platform
Check the appropriate column to indicate if an alternatives option you’re considering includes a specific feature. We’ve gone ahead and ticked the Apex column for you.
| Apex | Vendor A | Vendor B | |
|---|---|---|---|
| X |
Fully digital, real-time subscription processing From investor accreditation to post-trade documentation and automation, look for real-time, straight through processing — not the delays associated with batch processing. When activities are captured right away, you don’t have to remember to check in later to confirm successful completion. |
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| X |
Unified digital experience across all asset classes This might be the most important item on the list. It solves the foundational problem of alternative investments being outside the familiar experience used for other assets.Instead of expecting your staff and clients to log into multiple systems to see and manage their complete financial picture, look for alternative investments that are built into advisory workflows and investor brokerage accounts and statements. In other words, consider the advantages of a one-stop shop that deftly integrates account opening in seconds,³ funding in minutes, investor accreditation, subscription and trading, post-trade settlement, and investor statements and docs. |
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| X |
Unified user interface and reporting What exactly do we mean by “unified experience” for alts?
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| X |
Custodian-built, not outsourced Ask your prospective alts providers who actually handles alternative custody and clearing. You might be surprised to learn they outsource it to a specialized alts custodian, which means that the alternative investments experience they provide will continue to be siloed.Instead, look for an alts custodian-built solution that enables integration into your existing workflows. |
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| X |
Complete subscription lifecycle management Some platforms only handle the subscription process. Others only provide marketplace access. And some only handle investor communications. Most of these solutions fall under the category of “point solutions,” meaning they address a very specific, often narrowly defined business need.There’s nothing wrong with a point solution per se, but if you’re looking for a unified and integrated alts solution, you might need to manage more contracts, integrations, and coordination across vendors. |
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| X |
Extensive fund marketplace access Look for alts providers that provide access to thousands of funds from multiple alternatives fund issuers (or aggregators) to give your clients genuine choices with minimums that can be affordable for both High Earners Not Rich Yet (HENRYs) and higher-net-worth investors.You can offer your clients access to hedge funds, funds of funds, private equity, non-traded REITs, private company shares, private credit, limited partnership interests, and Business Development Companies (BDCs) through a single interface. |
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| X |
Special Purchase Vehicles (SPVs) availability If democratizing access to alternatives is on your wish list, ask your provider or partners if SPVs, which pool investor capital, are available.SPVs can enable more flexible participation in specific deals, allowing multiple investors to participate, reducing financial risk, and potentially lowering minimums. |
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| X |
Secondary alternatives markets access Looking for more flexibility and easier access to alternative investments? Consider securing access to the secondary alts market.The secondary market unlocks the ability to purchase shares from other investors, which can give investors access to select alts that:
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| X |
Optimized cash management Here’s a detail that matters more than you might think: When does money leave your client’s account for alts subscriptions? Some platforms require you to send cash weeks before settlement, which can result in lost interest income for your clients.The best alternative investments platforms move the money just before settlement (using digital money movement rails, not paper checks), so clients can keep earning returns until the last possible moment. |
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| X |
Streamlined post-trade operations The subscription is just the beginning. What happens with ongoing distributions, tax reporting, and investor communications? Many alts solutions leave your staff managing post-trade operations through separate vendors, creating more moving parts, more manual tasks, and more opportunities for errors. |
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| NO |
Possible conflicts of interest Some platforms are offered by fund issuers, which can create conflicts when they push funds that benefit them.Look for providers that focus on delivering the best alternative investments platform rather than creating their own investment products. You want unbiased access to the marketplace, not a sales pitch disguised as a platform. |
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| X |
“Bring Your Own Fund” capabilities Look for solutions that let you bring your own funds to the marketplace to help increase distribution to a wider investor audience. |
The real cost of fragmented alts experiences
Like the rest of your wealth tech stack, every additional system you use costs time and money. More vendor relationships to manage. More integrations to do. More training for your team. More confusion for your clients.
But the biggest cost may be opportunity cost. When offering alts feels too complicated, your team avoids the conversation entirely, leaving your clients to take their assets to niche alternative investment providers — and away from you.
The best alternative investments platform makes alts feel routine
Think about the experience you’d really like to offer to your staff and clients. Are you imagining that your team — including advisors, broker-dealers, operators, and others — can browse and learn about funds in a single marketplace? That your clients can more intuitively subscribe to a hedge fund, private company shares, and other alternative investments? And that your operations team can handle alts distributions similar to how they handle dividend payments? If this is your vision, then be sure to look for a unified, comprehensive alternatives platform.
The best alternative investments platform can transform alts from an operational headache into a competitive advantage. And you don’t have to take our word for it — this checklist can help you sort out your own options.
Want more details about Apex Alts and Apex Alts Marketplace?
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