A collaboration announced Tuesday by BlackRock, GeoWealth and iCapital uses iCapital’s technology to provide a custom platform for RIAs, enabling firms using GeoWealth to more easily include private assets within unified managed accounts (UMAs).
The technology is designed to minimize the complexity and multi-step process of investing in alternatives for the advisor and investor, including unified trade orders across multiple investment products, automation, one-stop e-signature solutions and consolidated client communications.
The offering is available for eligible advisors who leverage GeoWealth’s investment implementation platform to access BlackRock’s custom model portfolios.
In this offering, GeoWealth provides advisors with workflows, reporting tools and investment management capabilities throughout an investment’s lifecycle, and iCapital’s Multi-Investment Workflow Tool aims to streamline alternative assets investing.
“Modern RIAs require solutions to provide high-net-worth clients access to alternatives at scale,” said Colin Falls, CEO of GeoWealth. “The industry is racing to solve the challenge of implementing alternatives into model portfolios, while GeoWealth’s proprietary UMA technology will make this possible.”
“This collaboration between iCapital and GeoWealth complements our existing relationships to meet the evolving needs of advisors and their clients.”
– Jaime Magyera
Falls added, “We look forward to continuing to work with BlackRock and iCapital to offer this practice-differentiating offering to RIAs.”
According to the firms, the partnership facilitates access to BlackRock custom models intended to incorporate private markets, direct indexing and fixed income separately managed accounts (SMAs), alongside ETFs and mutual funds, in a single account.
“Retail wealth investors are leading the adoption of private markets as they seek portfolios offering exposure to investments they cannot access via public markets and the potential for uncorrelated returns,” said Jaime Magyera, Co-Head of U.S Wealth Advisory for BlackRock. “This collaboration between iCapital and GeoWealth complements our existing relationships to meet the evolving needs of advisors and their clients through an innovative and easy-to-use structure.”
“iCapital’s technology was designed to advance the industry and enable efficient management of alternative investments in client portfolios, and this partnership underscores that mission,” said Lawrence Calcano, Chairman and CEO of iCapital.
Calcano added, “Our deep integrations with GeoWealth and BlackRock will further transform the digital alternatives investing experience for advisors and their high-net-worth clients.”
iCapital had over $200 billion in global platform assets as of Sept. 30, it said. In July, iCapital partnered with Ashton Thomas Private Wealth, part of Arax Investment Partners, to provide financial advisors and their high net worth clients with access to data management and a range of alternative and structured investment opportunities.
In June, GeoWealth partnered with BlackRock to provide advisors on GeoWealth’s platform with access to BlackRock’s custom models.
Jeff Berman, Contributing Editor and Reporter at Wealth Solutions Report, can be reached at jberman@wealthsolutionsreport.com.
