Investing in private markets has shifted from a “nice to have” to a “need to have” offering, especially for advisors working with ultra-high-net-worth clients, according to Jake Miller, co-founder and chief solutions officer of Opto Investments, which provides fiduciaries with customized access to private markets.
Opto’s advisor clients work mostly with UHNW and high-net-worth investors, Miller told ThinkAdvisor recently. Increasingly, he said, advisors are trying to make high-quality private investments available to a broader base — qualified clients with at least $1.1 million in assets under management.
“What we're seeing now is even folks who sort of historically have been much more passive public market investors are recognizing that to keep ultra-high-net-worth clients happy, if nothing else, they need to have an answer here,” Miller said.
“How much effort and time they're investing in that private market answer varies. But there are folks who two years ago said, ‘We're never going to do that,’ who are working with us now, because it's a competitive environment and if the RIA down the street is saying, ‘We can get you access to x, y, z venture capital fund,’ you need to have an answer.”
Miller, previously an investment associate at Bridgewater Associates, a macro hedge fund, co-founded Opto in 2020. He “saw firsthand that by only operating in public markets, we were likely missing out on a lot of interesting opportunities in the world.”
Opto describes itself as a technology firm that teams with independent RIAs and family offices to deliver tailored, proprietary private markets funds at scale on a user-friendly platform. The firm notes that it’s a fiduciary with a fee structure aligned with clients.
While Opto has relationships with several hundred RIAs, it works with about 40 key clients to build diversified private markets funds that allow them to create custom growth and income funds, ranging from $25 million to $300 million, Miller said.
Various market dynamics and anticipated policy changes from the incoming Trump administration are creating shifts and potential opportunities in private markets, Miller suggested.
The Federal Trade Commission, for example, has been averse to large acquisitions from an antitrust perspective, and “that looks likely to change,” he said. Many companies might see the incoming administration as “a four-year window to get big acquisitions done, and a lot of that will happen on the private side.
“So we do anticipate a pickup in acquisitions and in mergers, with large public companies buying private market competitors. And this being potentially quite interesting for private equity and venture capital investors as a richer exit path in the next four years,” Miller said.
The potential increase in tariffs and a desire for reshoring in the Trump administration could mean greater demand for new plant property and equipment, affecting private equity, private real estate and private infrastructure, he suggested.
