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Investment House Injects $100 Million Into CAIS

Tom Burroughes

7 April 2022

An investment house has signaled its confidence in the private markets growth story by putting $100 million into US-based CAIS, an alternative asset class platform widening access to the space.

Reverence Capital Partners’ capital infusion continues from CAIS’s $225 million round in January, led by Apollo, Motive Partners, and Franklin Templeton. That round took CAIS’s enterprise valuation above $1 billion. 

Related to the new money, Milton Berlinski, managing partner at Reverence Capital Partners, is also joining CAIS’s board of directors, effective immediately, CAIS said in a statement yesterday. 

The new funding will be used to push forward CAIS’s technology and improve the experience clients have of its services, and digitize product operations for fund managers and financial advisors.

“Through our experience working with asset management, wealth management, and fintech businesses, we have seen first hand the challenges associated with independent investing in alternative asset classes,” Berlinski said. “CAIS is an industry leader providing the resources and infrastructure needed to enhance access, education, execution, and reporting to these complex solutions.”

CAIS is one of a handful of organizations seeking to widen access to alternative investment areas such as private equity, venture capital, private debt and infrastructure. These areas have boomed because they compensate investors for low liquidity by superior yields when returns from listed stocks and government bonds have been squeezed.

According to the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst Association, alternative assets are expected to make up to 24 per cent of the global investible market by 2025, up from 12 per cent in 2018. In 2021, transaction volume on the CAIS platform rose by 69 per cent, with the number of platform users increasing by 29 per cent in the same period.

The news also follows CAIS’s launch of the CAIS Advisory Council, a standing committee comprising experienced and next-generation RIAs, independent broker dealers, RIA aggregators, and custodians.

Reverence was founded in 2013 and is based in Manhattan, New York.