Crystal Capital Partners, a turn-key alternative investments platform for financial advisors, today announced the results of its inaugural Alts Survey to FAs. The new survey highlights key concerns and priorities among financial advisors related to alternative assets analytics.
In this inaugural survey, the results indicate a surge of demand for advanced alts analytics to help financial advisors serve their clients more effectively. The survey, which was conducted on an invitation-only basis was sent to the financial advisors that utilize Crystal’s platform to help better understand the effectiveness of the firm’s analytical tool suite.
The results of the survey showed that 37% of respondents found the firm’s analytics to be more helpful and robust compared to other platforms FAs work with; with 60% finding them equally as helpful, and only 3% responding that they were not as helpful.
Crystal Capital Partners currently serves a variety of financial advisers overseeing more than $100 billion in client assets. Independent RIAs, private banks, broker-dealers, and multi-family offices are among the top users of the firm’s analytical tool suite – benchmarking top-tier private equity, private credit, and hedge funds. Analytics play a crucial part in an advisor’s alts due diligence process, and the robustness of Crystal’s analytics are designed to help support users of all types.
Of the advisers who responded to Crystal’s survey, 15% said they used the tools weekly, 37% used the tools monthly, and 40% used the tools at least quarterly. Only 6% of respondents noted that they have not yet had the chance to utilize Crystal’s analytics.
The survey results also gave respondents the ability to provide additional commentary on the use of Crystal’s platform and the perceived strategic value of Crystal Capital’s portfolio-building technology. Crystal’s proprietary portfolio builder allows advisors to plug in current holdings to evaluate the effects of alternatives in the overall portfolio. Through the builder, advisors are able to allocate to specific sectors or strategies and complement existing traditional investments for their clients.
Steven Brod, CEO, and CIO of Crystal Capital Partners said, “All too frequently, alternative investment platforms that serve financial intermediaries provide limited to zero support beyond the point of sale. We believe a differentiator on our platform is the ability to support the full life cycle of alternative investments for financial advisors and their clients.”
Mr. Brod continued, “Among the many features of our platform, we deliver intuitive, advanced analytical tools which save financial advisors countless hours and resolve the multiple complexities that are involved with alts investing. Our analytical tools make it simple for financial advisors to seamlessly perform functions like rebalancing portfolios, managing liquidity requirements, capital calls, and distributions for multiple clients, to name a few.”
Andrew Jensen, Senior Wealth Advisor & Director of Alternative Investments at Zermatt Wealth Partners has been a “Power User” of Crystal’s platform. He said, “Crystal’s platform enabled our firm to instantly expose suitable clients to what we believe to be are best of breed private equity and hedge funds in a scalable, bespoke, and intelligently diversified fashion. The complementary suite of analytics provides us with the necessary quantitative and qualitative screening tools to ensure that we are building and managing appropriate portfolios for clients in accordance with their specific needs and objectives. This is very important to us as it relates to our role as a fiduciary, while working to drive investment performance.
The system also allows us to specifically design and manage portfolios of alternatives to solve for specific potential weaknesses within our broader investment portfolios, such as attempting to lower correlation to equities or bonds or by reducing overall volatility. This has been valuable in preparing for and navigating the current dual stock and bond bear market. In other words, the Crystal platform gives our boutique wealth management firm many of the same resources and capabilities as sophisticated consultants that advise large institutional investors but at the high net-worth investor level and without having to staff a dedicated alternative investment team or pay for third-party analytics.
Also, and I believe this is equally important, there is a tremendous amount of misinformation about private alternative investments, particularly as it relates to hedge funds. To that end, we have been successfully utilizing the Crystal Capital analytical suite as an effective educational tool for clients and prospects. At Zermatt Wealth, we prefer math & data over media and news. The Crystal system allows us to cut through the noise and illustrate the empirical benefits of this specialized asset class at the individual fund or portfolio level. Client education is crucial towards long-term investment success.”
