We discuss a niche in the alternative market, interval funds & closed-end funds. Kimberly Ann Flynn, Founder of XA Investments and a seasoned MBA from Harvard, shares her expertise in this market. We talk about her journey, how private credit and real estate interact with interval funds generating yields north of 10%, and the growing access for non-accredited investors.

 

Connect with Kimberly Ann Flynn on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberlyannflynn/
Connect with Ben Fraser on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/benwfraser/

 

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Transcription

Understanding Evergreen Structures in Investment

Kimberly Ann Flynn: All of the evergreen structures have requirements with respect to the distribution of income and realized gain. It can be thought of as an advantage in the sense that as an investor, what you’re earning needs to be distributed. So they flow through vehicles. So the fund can’t hold on to the gain necessarily and reinvest it.

But when there is a realization, they can use it to provide distributions to existing shareholders so that all shareholders benefit from that realization. 

Welcome to Invest Like a Billionaire Podcast

Ben Fraser: Hello, Future Billionaires! Welcome back to another episode of the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast. Today’s episode is really interesting. 

Exploring Interval Funds with Expert Kim Flynn

Ben Fraser: We talk all about interval funds, closed end funds.

Yeah, this is a niche in the alternative market that you may not have heard about. And I brought on an expert in this space, her name is Kim Flynn, and she talks about the emergence of this new kind of area within alternatives, it’s really continuing to increase access to alternative investments and through the use of what they call interval funds.

So these are evergreen funds that give you access. A lot of times in lower minimums into really institutional, previously inaccessible products like in private equity, in venture capital, as well as real estate, private credit, et cetera. But it’s a really interesting thing because it blends in between place of Working with advisors, helping them get more access for their clients to alternative investments, but also direct to consumer platforms and direct to consumer ways that you can invest directly into these types of assets.

Very interesting. 

The Rise of Alternative Investments and Access for Non-Accredited Investors

Ben Fraser: So if you have interest in how the landscape of alternative investments is changing and growing and access is increasing, definitely want to check it out. And at the very end, she talks about how non accredited investors can actually get access. To these types of investments based on some of these new structures.

So if you’re not a credit investor yet, you definitely want to listen to this episode and hear about how you can have access to some of these institutional quality products for very low minimums and not rent required to be accredited yet. So hope you enjoy the show. Here you go.

This is the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast, where we uncover the alternative investments and strategies that billionaires use to grow wealth. The tools and tactics you’ll learn from this podcast will make you a better investor. And help you build legacy wealth. Join us as we dive into the world of alternative investments, uncover strategies of the ultra wealthy, discuss economics and interview successful investors.

Welcome back to another episode of the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast. I’m your host, Ben Fraser. Today, we’ve got a really exciting guest, really excited to talk to her. Kimberly Flynn, she is the founder and managing director of XA Investments, and she’s responsible for all their product, business development activities, and very excited to talk about her area of expertise, which is closing funds, interval funds.

And a really unique area within alternatives that we haven’t spoken a lot about on the podcast. And so we went straight to the top and brought Kim on to talk about this whole area of alternatives. And she is very experienced. She got her MBA from Harvard. She’s a CFA, a charter financial analyst, and brings a lot of experience and background in the space.

So Kim, thanks so much for coming on the show. 

Kimberly Ann Flynn: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. 

Ben Fraser: Yeah. 

Deep Dive into Interval Funds: Structure, Access, and Advantages

Ben Fraser: So give a little bit of background for those that maybe aren’t familiar with you, XA Investments, and what you do, and then we’ll dive right in. 

Kimberly Ann Flynn: Sure. So we’re a Chicago based asset manager, and we focus on alternative investments and making that area of the private markets more accessible for individual investors.

We have two parts of our business. We actually consult with asset managers and we also will consult with RAs that want to launch their own proprietary products. Most of the products build upon the expertise that we have in the closed end fund space. You may have heard of an interval fund.

You may not, but interval funds are a type of SEC registered business. Fund that allow people to access things like private equity, venture capital infrastructure and whatnot. And there’s a lot of interest right now in particular among financial advisors in trying to tap into the higher return potential from some of these alternative investments.

Ben Fraser: Yeah, makes sense. For our audience, a lot of them are direct investing into real estate and, into single asset syndication, sometimes it is a fund. Generally, these are closed end funds, they have a short period of time raising the capital, they go deploy it. And, get the returns along the way.

A lot of what you’re talking about, these are are they traded on exchanges or they’re non traded and they’re usually sold through advisors and could be in different structures. Break down a little bit of what is Interval Fund? How does this work? How does someone get access to it? And what are some of the benefits of that?

Kimberly Ann Flynn: Sure, so they can be offered both ways. You may be familiar with a listed closed end fund that does trade on a stock exchange like the New York Stock Exchange. And they do trade similar to ETFs many of your listeners probably are investors in ETFs. So a listed closed end fund, there are a handful.

And that’s largely due to the way those products are brought to market the universe of funds. It’s growing and very popular right now is something that’s not listed. It’s not traded. It is continuously offered. So just like a mutual fund you can buy shares at N. A. V. But interval basically speaks to the frequency with which liquidity is offered.

Okay. So you can imagine if you’re investing in private equity, liquidity is going to be limited because those are investments made with very long investment horizons. And so interval funds right now, I mentioned are SEC registered. So you get the protections of the 1940 act and, you get conveniences like a 1099, just like you would a mutual fund, but they’re I would say individual investors.

You probably are less familiar or haven’t heard of interval funds and so I would talk with your wealth manager or talk with a financial advisor to the extent you work with one. Right now some of the products are offered with no suitability restrictions at all. So an example would be a private credit fund and so that allows entry for very small minimum investments to a really large audience of people.

Now, private equity or venture capital, for example. Typically would be restricted to accredited investors or higher. And so I mentioned suitability only because it’s a question with, if you’re familiar with investing in private funds, typically you have to meet some minimum suitability threshold.

So the thresholds tend to be lower here, but you often have to talk with a financial advisor about Getting access to a product like this as opposed to there are a couple direct to consumer platforms that are starting to add interval funds. 

The Future of Direct-to-Consumer Investment Platforms

Kimberly Ann Flynn: And I think in 12 to 18 months, we’re going to see a lot more direct to consumer type options, and I’m happy to go into that in greater detail.

Ben Fraser: Yeah. Yeah. I’d love to hear some more on that. And it’s interesting. You mentioned the advisors are looking for options to be able to allocate to different alternatives. And, we don’t. come from the advisory space. But what we have seen in some of the advisors we work with is the system is pretty challenging, at least historically, for advisors to, to make allocations into alternatives because they’re generally not on the same platforms.

They can’t collect AUM fees off it. Many times, there can be conflicts of interest and other things that you fiduciary responsibilities and, they can’t perform the due diligence needed most of the time on these types of products. But historically speaking, a lot of times these other private market opportunities can provide higher returns as you get that illiquidity premium and a lot less volatility because they’re not market to market daily usually.

Kimberly Ann Flynn: Yeah. 

Ben Fraser: Talk a little bit about maybe from what you’re seeing on just an overall. Are you seeing more appetite, more kind of capital moving to these types of assets? And then how do these structures create more access to the alternatives that may be historically? 

Kimberly Ann Flynn: Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

This space is growing quite rapidly. Anywhere between a 15 to 20 percent compounded annual growth rate, if you’re looking at it. Yeah. Absolutely. A number of funds or if you’re looking at assets in the space and the types of fund sponsors the market has now reached a point where north of 200 funds interval and tender funds.

So there’s actually a lot of great fund sponsors and alternative investments to choose from. And I think part of this as this market continues to grow at a very rapid pace, You’re seeing new entrants from both. Firms like mutual fund sponsors and also alternative boutiques, firms that were primarily running private real estate or private equity in a private fund format.

and so you’re gonna see investment opportunities that you can’t access and you frankly can’t structure in a mutual fund or an ETF. And that the reason for that is there are strict rules about liquidity for mutual funds and ETFs, whereas these products, in, in theory, a hundred percent of the portfolio could be deemed less liquid or illiquid.

So you have a lot more flexibility. Practically speaking, you’re going to have. A portion of the portfolio that is a liquidity sort of sleeve. So you can allow people to get in and out of the fund. And so this is an area that’s growing very rapidly and is expected. McKinsey says that the sort of retail, democratization of alternatives.

This trend is only going to continue because the responsibility and the burden for retirement is really on the shoulders of individual investors. And what those individual investors need is some of these institutional investment opportunities that they may not have otherwise had access to. But surely an endowment or a pension fund, they have access to the best private equity sponsors.

And so that’s what we’re trying to make more available to the average end client. 

Ben Fraser: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And from my understanding, historically, If someone wanted to get access to, one of the top tier private equity funds or venture capital funds, it’s pretty difficult, right?

Because you have to either write a huge check or you have to have the right network. And if a lot of times they were traded through broker dealer networks and not necessarily on platforms or through these kinds of different access funds. And so what you’re doing is trying to create the pipeline and make the ability for people to access these.

Easier, simpler, better structures. Talk a little bit about just some of the mechanisms that you’re using. Because in my mind, a closed end fund, at least in our side of it, if it’s, we’re raising for capital for say real estate or private credit, we have a short period of time. We raise the capital, we close that and we go deploy it.

liquidity for the whole rest of the fund’s life. You’re saying that there are platforms that either have secondary market liquidity or the fund itself actually. It has liquidity. Talk a little bit about what that looks like. 

Kimberly Ann Flynn: Yes. The fund is mandated by SEC rules to provide liquidity.

So a typical liquidity window for an interval fund would be a quarterly liquidity amount and they would set aside 5 percent to conduct repurchases. Now more than 5 percent of shareholders might want out of the fund at any one moment in time. Okay. This would be something we’ve observed in the non listed, REIT marketplace in the last two years now.

Bearing in mind that these are long term investments where you should be ready to be in a fund for multiple years on end, you are offered this liquidity window and to the extent that. There’s liquidity to offer. You could receive your entire request or you could be prorated if there is more demand than there is supply for liquidity.

And so that limited amount of liquidity I think is helpful for investors in terms of how they think about this. You don’t have to set it and forget it entirely like you might some other types of alternative investments. I think the reason for that, the, These products are called semi liquid.

So it’s the way to think about interval funds being grouped in with other semi liquid products like non listed REITs or non listed BDCs, which have similar sort of liquidity windows. 

Ben Fraser: Okay. Yeah, very interesting. And to your earlier point, historically these types of funds that are. Venture capital focused or private equity focus.

They can sometimes have 10 year investment cycles that they’re targeting to return all the capital profits, but that’s a long time, right? I don’t know where I’m going to be in 10 years. And if I have no, no liquidity, it can make it challenging to write that check, but, obviously you want to.

Be able to hold on for the whole period if needed, but have the option of liquidity can be a helpful tool. 

Kimberly Ann Flynn: And that’s why these are also called evergreen structures in the sense that they will continually invest and reinvest. And so there’s not a drawdown fund with a set termination date, one of the benefits with that is that this fund is going to terminate in 10 years.

Now these funds are perpetual. And they’re evergreen in nature, and so your exit needs to be coordinated with one of these liquidity windows, which is another reason why they offer this type of liquidity, because the fund will go on. Beyond the point of, when you decide to exit or another investor decides to exit, it’s your choice on timing.

And it does, I think, you hear a lot of firms, some of the market leaders in the private equity space, like a Blackstone, you also see firms like Apollo and KKR They all have interval and tender fund products because these evergreen structures, they view is the wave of the future in terms of how they’re building their businesses.

Now there’s clearly motivations that they have, but what you were talking about in terms of you want to be able to access. Some of the best institutional quality alternative managers and all of the big alternative managers have already entered this space and some of them now have two or three fund offerings.

It’s not just a, they’re not dabbling anymore in this market. It’s now really them to go. An area where people are staking out their territory and they’re spending a lot of resources on educating investors and advisors on how to use these types of products in the portfolio.

Ben Fraser: Yeah. Very interesting. From a sponsor’s perspective, what’s the advantage of an interval fund to them? Why is it appealing to have an evergreen? Fun versus a self liquidating or a set time period. 

Kimberly Ann Flynn: The number one selfish motivation would be that the retail market is anticipated to continue outpacing the institutional marketplace in terms of the speed and the rate of the growth and that’s expected to continue for the next 20 years.

So the retail market is where they need to be. And if you want to access the individual investor you need to go through an SEC registered fund format. And this is really the only way to access the individual investor through these types of product structures. Because as you were saying, a lot of investors don’t meet the minimums to go into a private fund.

And frankly, they may not want the hassle of a K 1, that’s not for everyone. If you’re very wealthy or you run a family office, you probably have quite a few private fund investments. But so that’s why this is really opening up a whole nother world for these large alternative boutiques.

This is not goodwill on their part. This is a sizable growing market opportunity. And the reason for that, as is, we don’t have corporate pensions anymore. I’ve got a 401k I’m saving for my retirement. And so that pool of capital is no longer in the hands of.

of the pens, pension fund managers, it’s in the hands of individual retirees, and so therefore you have to have a way or a means by which to access and make these available to individuals. 

Ben Fraser: That makes a lot of sense. When they’re putting out these funds, are these going to be sidecars alongside other funds or these are actually, funds that go make the investments themselves and, or are they creating this as an ability to offer liquidity alongside one of their funds or how does it structure generally?

Kimberly Ann Flynn: It can be done a number of different ways. You want to make sure as an investor that you’re getting access to the good stuff, if you will, right? You want to. The institutional quality strategy. You don’t want some watered down or something different, right? You don’t want a beta product.

You want, and so therefore we always talk about, preserving institutional integrity. You don’t want to change the strategy. You don’t want to water it down. And these structures allow you to do that. They allow you to take a private fund strategy and build it pretty much the same way.

We’ve already talked about the liquidity requirements. So you do tend to keep anywhere from 5 to 20 percent of the portfolio in liquid assets to be able to meet repurchases. So that’s the one departure that’s necessary. And I would say some firms are being very more thoughtful than others about how they think about liquidity management.

Some of them will use leverage facilities so that they’re not sitting in a bunch of cash creating cash drag. But having something that the firms themselves, these pools of capital are usually invested directly. And so to avoid having layers of fees, individual investors don’t want to be paying double, you don’t want to be paying two layers of fees.

And so You know, and these funds for leading alternative managers become quite sizable and therefore they become quite lucrative. So you’re seeing them deploy capital in the private credit space. It’s almost all the time direct deployment, into credit securities things like direct lending, things like asset back lending, things like niche, income strategies.

Now in, in private equity, to your point, It’s a bit more mixed. There are some funds that will invest directly in late stage private companies, like in company employee gray shares, things of that nature so that you can invest directly.

Most of the bigger private equity funds are fundifying multiple private funds within and so sometimes you see it as a direct, sometimes you do see it as a fund of funds, and so that’s, those are the questions you want to be thinking about in terms of what am I paying to go direct versus something that might be a fund of funds where you do have two layers of fees.

Part of the benefit of having a fund of funds in addition to diversification is that it does allow you to build a product that can be sold with a lower suitability potentially. Typically it’s an accredited investor. So there’s a lot of asset class specific considerations for each of these different types of products.

It’s slightly different depending on the asset. 

Ben Fraser: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So it could be a fund to fund, it could be a direct investment into a fund but to your point, if it’s a fund to fund, most people balk at that because, hey, I got multiple layers of fees, but if that fund to fund gives access to multiple different strategies and increases my diversification.

And that could actually decrease the requirements from a suitability standpoint to Create more access. Is that what you’re saying? 

Kimberly Ann Flynn: Yeah. And in theory it reduces risk. I think some of the most successful private equity funds have been fund to funds. So they’ve replicated an institutional fund to fund strategy.

And so that’s appropriate. The question is do we There’s also to acknowledge, I think some of the alternative asset managers, there are capacity constraints on venture capital is a good example. And you don’t want to invest in venture capital with a tier two or tier three manager, right?

The manager selection. in some of these alternative investments is particularly important. So if you can get access to a better quality private equity manager or venture capital manager through a fund of funds, then that’s why that structure may be better than going direct with a lesser firm or a less well known firm into venture capital, just because the dispersion of the returns among the portfolio investments is much, much wider and manager skill plays a really important part of driving overall risk and return.

Because you’re not making money on every single venture capital investment in the portfolio. 

Ben Fraser: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Come back to the evergreen structure. So if I’m a sponsor and I’m making long term investments as a venture capitalist into these portfolio companies, at a certain point, there’s going to be an exit hopefully right from some of these companies where they either go public, they get acquired.

So there’s going to be natural, big liquidity events within the fund. But if the fund is perpetual, is the idea that they just continue to reinvest Those profits back into new companies, less whatever liquidity is at that point. And how does that structure being evergreen potentially change the strategy either for better or for worse from a sponsor standpoint, if this is going to go on forever, do I.

Do longer term investments or do I just continue to redeploy or what’s the thought process there? Because that does change the structure and the potential types of investments you might make given the fund. 

Kimberly Ann Flynn: Yes. All of the evergreen structures have requirements with respect to the distribution of income and realized gain.

And it can be thought of as an advantage in the sense that as an investor, what you’re earning needs to be distributed. So they flow through vehicles. So the fund can’t hold on to the gain necessarily and reinvest it. The, but for when there is a realization, they can use it to provide distributions to existing shareholders so that all shareholders benefit from that realization.

And the benefit, I think, is that you’re not up against a set term where you have to liquidate everything, because as we know, those liquidations aren’t gonna come together at the same time and they may or may not be, they may not, may or may not have tails on it in terms of when you sell a position.

And The natural liquidity in a mature portfolio helps you be able to satisfy shareholders’ desires for attractive levels of distribution and gain, because under the 40 Act, you are required to pay those through. There, there is an ability. to retain a small portion of the gain and to pay excise tax, but it’s not very common that this happens.

And so you can think of these as, what I’m earning will get paid to me. And then a lot of investors will reinvest whatever distributions back into the fund, but they could also take their cash flow and reinvest as they see fit into other investment opportunities. So you’re.

When there are, as you go, let’s say this, a realization happened in year four or year seven. It’s in the current fund fiscal year that that would need to be paid out to you. It’s an annual requirement that these distributions be made to shareholders. 

Ben Fraser: Got it. That makes sense.

Talk a little bit about valuations of the underlying assets. Because in a fund that is trading at nav in my mind that would be the first. Concern, right? What’s, especially with these portfolio companies that are publicly traded and what’s the valuation methodology if I’m, coming in at the, that current nav or I’m trading out at that current nav, how does that impact?

What’s the methodology behind that? Is that standardized based on these types of funds? Is it, Something to pay attention to as an investor? 

Kimberly Ann Flynn: Yes, absolutely. Because, part of it speaks to transparency. A lot of the, for example, the private credit funds in the market, many of them are actually daily NAV.

And some of them are conducting valuation pursuant to their policies internally, and many of the funds are using external third party valuation agents to strike that daily NAV. And so it’s permitted, you can do it either way. You can do it in house or you can have a third party conduct the valuation.

Now, when you move into less liquid assets, things like private equity or maybe infrastructure, you’re going to see a monthly NAV more typically, or even a quarterly NAV. And we were talking a moment ago about fund to funds because the underlying private funds are marking valuation on a quarterly basis.

You’ll often see those fund to funds align. With the valuation frequency and timing of the underlying private funds. So I think where there can be a disconnect is to the extent that, as a fund you’re required to follow your valuation policies and procedures. And if you have a daily nav, you have to follow those procedures every day.

Where I think there becomes a disconnect, particularly on daily nav funds is what if the values of the assets in the portfolio. Don’t change every day. And that may be if you’re talking about maybe direct lending, but other things, other factors, the market is moving every day. And so some funds will use algorithms.

Or they’re, they’ll use formulas or they’ll look at market indices, things just like you would pick a benchmark that would move directionally in the same direction as your portfolio. They’re, sometimes they’re using these market indicators because you can’t just say The NAB is the same as yesterday.

You need to be thoughtful of the market environment. In March of 2020 valuations moved very quickly in the span of two days. And so your valuation process needs to pick up some of those macro moves in addition to things that are more micro or at the portfolio level. And so this can get really tricky, particularly if you’ve got a long duration asset or an illiquid asset like infrastructure you’re not buying or selling an airport, every other quarter or even every other year.

So it’s harder to ascertain, you may have to do an appraisal of real estate or an appraisal of farmland to actually get And a value, but that value is not going to change from week to week. And so that’s where more questions come in regarding is my value true? And I think you all have read in the press in the last year and a half.

A lot of concerns about private equity, venture capital, and a lot of money were deployed in 2021. But the valuations didn’t really seem to come down very much. And, we saw that in the broader equity market as well. So I think there’s a lot of good reason to question because there’s definitely a lags in terms of some of these illiquid assets and if the assets are not selling, then there’s no mark on that asset.

So it’s a really, it’s a, you need to be thoughtful about how, because you want to make sure you’re not overpaying if you’re buying an asset or getting less than you should be if you’re selling. 

Ben Fraser: So look at the underlying methodology in the fund. And if it’s investing in securities, it has a more liquid daily mark to market information that’s simpler.

But to your point, if it’s more liquid, longer duration, and the values don’t change day to day, understand what that process is for how frequent they’re being valued, what methods are being used, et cetera. 

Navigating the World of Non-Accredited Investor Opportunities

Ben Fraser: Talk a little bit about For non accredited investors, what options are there for them?

You mentioned that there might be access, even if you’re not accredited yet. Which to me is a huge bonus, right? For a lot of people that aren’t quite there yet, that have access to more traditional things for that. If you’re an accredited investor, if you’re not, what does that look like? Is it the suitability standards?

Are there certain options for you that you could still invest in? 

Kimberly Ann Flynn: Yeah. The two biggest categories in the interval and tender fund market are private credit and real estate. And a majority of the real estate and. Credit funds are available for any investor that doesn’t have to meet a suitability minimum.

Things like private equity you do tend to have a higher suitability. Sometimes it’s accredited, sometimes it’s a qualified client. But more than half of the funds in the market, over a hundred funds, have been in an area which has attracted a lot of demand, which is a growing number of credit strategies with very attractive yields.

You’re talking about yields north of 10 percent. So there’s a reason to look beyond traditional fixed income investments into some of these different types of alternative credit. And so that’s, I think, a good place to start exploring. A lot of investors who come into the interval fund market are already, or have already invested in business development companies, either listed BDCs or non listed BDCs, and many of them have had real estate experience too.

So these exposures to private credit. Or real estate in the interval fund space can be diversifying, but there’s also a comfort level because a lot of investors have already had prior experience in those markets. 

Ben Fraser: Okay. And what would the kind of range of investment minimums be for these types of funds?

Are they going to be? Several hundred thousand dollars, is it going to be, in the thousands? Is it? I’m sure it’s a big range, but. 

Kimberly Ann Flynn: Yes. You commonly see 2, 500 as a minimum investment. Sometimes you see 10, 000. So most of the fund sponsors want these products to be accessible.

And I share, it may be a hundred thousand, but you’re probably going to buy the A, A share, the C share with a much lower investment minimum. So they are accessible in that way. 

Ben Fraser: Okay. Which is another huge advantage. Most of the private equity and the real estate, 506 C offerings that we live in the world of mostly minimums are at least 50, 000, a lot of times, a hundred thousand or, much higher.

So having access to lower minimums is another great benefit to, aside from the diversification, talk a little bit again about access, right? So this is. An emerging area of the interval funds, close in funds. You said most of the time, they would work through an advisor, but there are some direct to consumer platforms.

Talk about if someone is hearing about this for the first time on this podcast, what’s the next step? Where do they go to find out more information about these types of funds? 

Kimberly Ann Flynn: Sure. We have a lot of education on my website, which is xa investments. com. You can contact me if you want to learn more.

Direct to consumer options, I’m going to give you three examples of firms that are targeting this side of the investment universe. And so firms that have been successful Fundrise is a direct to consumer platform. It has a number of interval funds. And they’ve been very successful capital raising in real estate and real assets.

So take a look at Fundrise. I don’t actually know them. I’ve not talked with them. I’ve just taken note of the firms that have been successful. Another firm is Yieldstreet. Yieldstreet has been in the news because of their direct to consumer product offering. They offer a number of different institutional alternatives, but they also have a number of interval funds available.

They also acquired a firm called Cadre, which was focused on real estate as well. But I know Yieldstreet has more than just real estate. They have credit. They have a few other asset classes. And then a third option that I recently learned about was SoFi. SoFi has actually launched a direct to consumer platform for interval and tender funds and their initial menu of funds.

I think they have eight or so. I believe like the Carlisle tactical credit and perhaps the Apollo. I noticed on the SoFi list that there were a lot of the big brands that we just talked about today. So those are three interesting options. The SoFi announcement was actually just made last month.

So I think we’re going to see more firms opening up. You don’t need a financial advisor. In any of these three examples that I’ve just given you, you can go to their website and you can find out more information at Fundrise, Yieldstreet, or at SoFi. 

Ben Fraser: Yeah. Got it. Makes sense. And then, if you want to get access to some of the bigger kinds of private equity or venture capital firms, it sounds like SoFi is potentially.

Opening the door to a couple of those, but would that generally be through an advisor? 

Kimberly Ann Flynn: That’s true. And I, you’re right. I, to differentiate between Fundrise, which is proprietary, they’re branded their investment expertise. That’s how they’re offering those products. Yieldstreet, I think it’s a mix of both their proprietary investment capabilities and third party firms, whereas SoFi that it looks like the platform that they’ve built is entirely These third party pedigreed alternative managers and so yes, the firms and the products that they’ve onboarded, this is a list of firms that have a long institutional track record of success and the funds themselves, while they may be newer they’ve onboarded funds that are going to be of interest to a broad audience.

They, I’ll just say they haven’t picked a bunch of niche funds. I think they’re The ones that they’ve selected, I think, and the intention is to add more to their platform as they go. 

Ben Fraser: Got it. Okay. Awesome. 

Concluding Insights and Resources for Investors

Ben Fraser: We’re going to put some of the links in the show notes here. You mentioned you have some research, maybe some white papers.

What are some resources that maybe we can provide to the listeners if they want to get more information and learn more about XA Investments. 

Kimberly Ann Flynn: Yeah, absolutely. Our firm, we focus on private credit. So we have a number of white papers in our knowledge bank. We also actively publish research on the interval and tender market.

We do a monthly market update, so you can subscribe on our website if you’d like to follow the trends in the market. And we, we try to be democratic in our approach and we’re covering all products and all sponsors. And so if you have any questions, we’re happy to point you in the right direction.

Ben Fraser: Well, we’ll put some of those links in the notes for people to check out and can’t really appreciate you coming on the show today. This is really interesting. 

Kimberly Ann Flynn: Thank you. I appreciate it.