The Asian Banker Tuesday, 15 October 2024

ADDX launches private market services for wealth managers

5 min read

Wealth managers can now introduce more of their end-investors to the world of private investments through a newly-launched institutional service on digital securities exchange ADDX. Corporate treasuries and family offices can also take part in the space via a corporate service to diversify their portfolios through private market products.

Both services fall under a new product line for businesses, called ADDX Advantage. Among some of the first institutions to come on board as partners include StashAway, one of Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing digital wealth managers, and CGS-CIMB, one of the leading securities brokerage companies in Asia.

Wealth managers utilising this institutional service can offer their clients fractional access to private market products, which better enhances portfolio diversification away from public markets exposure. This service is designed for brokerages, private banks, external asset managers and multi-family offices. Through a business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) model, the service ultimately benefits the wealth manager’s end-clients, who may be individual accredited investors or corporate investors.

Currently, wealth managers looking to offer private market products to their end-clients have to negotiate deals with each issuer separately – a time-consuming process. Being on ADDX means an instant plug-in to a full suite of deals across multiple asset types. The use of blockchain and smart contracts on ADDX also enables the fractionalisation of opportunities down to a minimum of $10,000, from the $250,000 to $5 million typically required when going direct to private market issuers. The lower barrier to entry makes it possible for end-clients to manage risk by spreading their capital across a variety of products.

Depending on the regulatory licences the wealth managers hold, they can choose between two types of institutional services. They can either execute trades and perform fund transfers on behalf of end-investors, or create sub-accounts in their end-clients’ names and allow the clients to take control of their own activity on ADDX.

Carol Fong, group CEO of CGS-CIMB said, “We believe that investments should be made more affordable to a wider group of investors. This means collaborating with platforms such as ADDX that allow more investors to access previously out-of-reach private investments with fractional ownership. This is a start to ‘democratise’ the private equity market to make it more inclusive”.

ADDX’s corporate service operates under a B2B model and is designed for institutional investors, as well as businesses investing their own capital, such as corporate treasuries and family offices. For example, corporate treasuries with excess cash on hand may now benefit from short-term investment instruments that pay a higher return than bank fixed deposits. A three-month commercial paper with a yield of 2.3% p.a. by the SGX-listed ValueMax is currently listed on ADDX. Family offices, on the other hand, often have longer horizons and more sophisticated investment strategies. They may prefer a wider range of products, including opportunities with higher risk-reward profiles. For them, the lower minimum investment sizes on ADDX can help them build optimal portfolios, narrowing the handicap they traditionally face due to their smaller pool of investable capital vis-à-vis large institutional players like sovereign wealth funds and pension funds.

Oi-Yee Choo, CEO of ADDX said, “ADDX was founded with a vision of democratising private markets for individual investors. Our business-to-consumer (B2C) experience has shown us how investors now have the platform to accumulate a diversified private markets portfolio powered by our technology. We would like to expand our approach to tailoring private markets for more efficient access to our partners in the wealth management space”.

Choo added, “Corporate investors and family offices face serious pain points in the market. We had the solutions to these problems, having built an efficient platform for individual investors with a steady stream of deals. The last mile was building the technology to serve institutional and corporate investors, which required time and investments, as their needs are more complex – ranging from API connections to multi-user access”.

“For ADDX, this latest move represents an important strategic pivot that strengthens the competitiveness of our exchange by expanding and diversifying our investor base. This will better equip us to attract high-quality issuers to list on ADDX, knowing there will be sufficient investor demand. As an exchange, our goal is to ensure a critical mass of both issuers and investors at the table, so that capital can find worthwhile investment projects, and vice versa. In launching private market services for wealth managers and corporate investors, we have made a long stride towards this goal,” she said.

Established in 2017, ADDX uses blockchain and smart contract technology to automate manual processes that have thus far made it inefficient for private market securities to be distributed to a large number of investors. The efficiencies from tokenising these securities enable ADDX to reduce minimum investment sizes to $10,000. Asset classes available on the ADDX platform include private equity, venture capital, private debt, real estate, hedge funds, cryptocurrency funds, and structured products. ADDX has listed 26 deals to date, working with blue-chip names such as Partners Group, UOB, Investcorp, CGS-CIMB, as well as Temasek-owned entities Mapletree, Azalea and SeaTown.

Re-disseminated by The Asian Banker

Attend Our Next Events
Finance MEA 2024
20 November 2024
Wealth & Society 2024
06 December 2024
Japan Innovation Study Tour 2025
17 - 19 February 2025