How to Create Your Own Access Fund

Special Purpose Vehicles (“SPVs” or “Access Funds”) are being increasingly used by elite, fast-growing advisors to differentiate themselves from others who heavily focus on the 60–40 model portfolio. With clients showing more interest in alternative assets, SPVs are becoming commonplace due to their effective ability to facilitate investments into such assets with high minimums.

Advisors are creating and maintaining Access Funds to facilitate investments in private market opportunities, such as private equity funds, private companies, real estate, and more. However, despite the benefits of SPVs, many advisors are wary of making them a core part of their business because of the manual work, substantial time spent dealing with vendors, and significant capital required to set them up.

Setting up and maintaining your own Access Fund requires hiring a law firm, accounting firm, audit firm, custodial bank, and administrator to assist with the following tasks:

• Creating all relevant legal documentation required of the investment vehicle including Private Placement Memorandum (“PPM”), Subscription Agreements, Operating Agreements.
• Formation and incorporation of the investment vehicle
• Time-sensitive annual filings to maintain good-standing of SPVs
• Creating and managing the investment vehicle bank account
• Know Your Customer (“KYC”) and Anti Money Laundering (“AML”) checks on the beneficial owners of the investment vehicle
• Generation and delivery of capital call notices and distributions
• Preparation and distribution of investor Schedule K-1s
• Distribution and gathering of subscription documents either manually or via a third party tool
• Coordinating a third-party audit of the investment vehicle

This operational burden can weigh heavily on advisors looking to offer a multitude of private opportunities to their clients each year. To overcome these challenges, Aqua offers a platform designed to give advisors all the benefits of private markets opportunities facilitated through SPVs, without the increased costs and operational workload. Aqua sets up a white-labeled, tech-centric platform for firms to host all their alternative investments in one place, including private market opportunities such as funds, private companies, real estate, and real assets.

Aqua manages the end-to-end lifecycle of a private investment, including SPV creation, KYC/AML checks, digital subscription documents, ongoing fund administration, third-party audit, K1 issuance, and capital call/distribution management. With Aqua, advisors can scalably offer alternative assets and private market opportunities to their clients.