CAIS and Bluerock Capital Markets has announced a strategic partnership that will introduce interval funds onto the CAIS platform.
The Bluerock interval funds will be available for purchase through custodians via a ticker symbol, and CAIS will use the power of its communication and engagement platform to educate advisors regarding the benefits and opportunities that Bluerock funds represent. In addition to the existing interval funds Bluerock manages, CAIS and Bluerock will work hand-in-hand with the advisor community to create new interval products specifically tailored to their evolving investment needs.
“Bluerock interval funds afford individuals the opportunity to directly invest at lower minimum investments in a highly diversified, income-generating pool of institutional private equity real estate strategies managed by top-ranked institutional managers," said Brad Walker, CAIS managing director and head of alternative investments. “A growing number of advisors have demonstrated an interest in adding interval funds to their alternative investment mix. Our strategic partnership with Bluerock aligns us with a firm with proven expertise in the space and an innovative approach to creating investment products.”
The first Bluerock product available on the CAIS platform—the Bluerock Total Income+ Real Estate Fund (TIPWX), is an interval fund sub-advised by Mercer and Deutsche Asset Management with a focus on private equity real estate investments.
Since inception, the fund has employed a multi-sector, multi-manager strategy that has provided investors with capital appreciation through net asset value growth, regular cash distributions, and access to a highly diversified portfolio of non-correlated real estate assets. The Total Income+ Fund delivered the highest risk-adjusted returns, as measured by the Sharpe Ratio, among over 1,300 real estate funds tracked by Morningstar in both 2016 and 2017.
“CAIS has built the premier platform for independent advisors interested in learning about and adding alternative investments to their client portfolios,” said Jeffrey Schwaber, CEO of Bluerock Capital Markets.
An interval fund is a professionally managed investment company registered as a closed-end fund under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and is widely viewed as an investor-friendly alternative product due to its transparent nature. Interval funds calculate NAV daily, offer liquidity events in the form of periodic share repurchases, and provide simple tax reporting via Form 1099s. Advisors may find interval funds particularly attractive for their clients' portfolios because of the access they provide to private, institutionally managed investment vehicles not readily available to the broader market. The flexibility to invest in illiquid investment vehicles without limitation allows interval funds to pursue higher risk-adjusted returns while providing lower correlations to the volatility of the public equity and fixed income markets.
