Altruist, the California-based custodial platform for independent registered investment advisors, has launched an alternatives marketplace that gives RIA clients access to private equity, real estate, and infrastructure strategies.
The move announced Tuesday is set to bring private markets capabilities once associated with the largest wirehouses into the independent channel.
According to Altruist's announcement, the new offering includes strategies from Blackstone, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, KKR, and Pantheon, which will be available at launch with no custody fees for partner funds. Advisors can prepare and send client documents for review and e-signature, manage reporting, and handle billing – all without leaving the platform.
The company said the integrated workflow addresses a longstanding pain point in the alternatives space, where advisors on legacy platforms have typically been required to coordinate across separate portals and manual paperwork processes.
"Advisors are competing for clients who want access to private markets, more personalized strategies, and flexible ways to manage liquidity," said Jason Wenk, founder and CEO of Altruist, in a statement accompanying the launch. "Until now, delivering that access often meant working across multiple systems and inefficient workflows."
Alternative asset data on the platform flows directly into client portfolios, allowing clients to view private market holdings alongside their traditional investments in a single interface.
Altruist also said it wlll be introducing new margin loans for client liquidity, options trading for income generation, and expanded money movement features, including direct deposit, physical checkbooks, and third-party digital check distribution later this year.
The private markets launch is the latest step in an accelerating effort by Altruist to close the product gap between the independent RIA channel and larger institutional platforms. The company, which operates as a self-clearing broker-dealer, has been hard at work to roll out capabilities previously difficult for smaller advisory firms to access or afford.
Last November, Altruist announced what it described as an industry-first custodial integration, connecting its proprietary AI agent Hazel to real-time Altruist account, beneficiary, household, holdings, and balance data. The integration allows wealth managers to run household-level concentration analyses, surface sector exposure, flag required minimum distribution obligations, and perform other account-level queries in seconds.
More recently in February, the company added AI-powered tax planning to Hazel's capabilities, enabling advisors to generate personalized tax strategies by feeding the system client 1040s, paystubs, account statements, meeting notes, and CRM data.
The same month, Santa Monica, California-based Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management, selected Altruist as a custodial partner, with CEO and President Ross Gerber stating it would move all new business to Altruist as part of strategic roadmap toward $10 billion in assets under management.
Shortly after that, Arkansas-based Sowell Management added Altruist as an enterprise custodial partner. Daryl Seaton, CEO of Sowell Management, cited access to Hazel as a material factor in the decision, saying the AI tools would allow smaller and mid-sized advisors in its network to compete more effectively with larger practices.
In the most recent T3/Inside Information Software Survey, Altruist garnered an 8.31 user rating in the custodial platforms category, ahead of Charles Schwab's 7.95 and Fidelity's 7.73. The platform also earned above-average user ratings across trading and rebalancing (8.58), portfolio management (8.65), account aggregation (8.34), and fee billing (9.17 for Altruist Fee Billing).
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