Johnathan Rickman | Blue Vault
Wealth advisors have a lot on their plate, with time for conducting research in rare supply. As more investors pivot their portfolios to private market solutions, it can be tedious and time consuming to analyze 10 offerings much less the hundreds of alternative investments currently on the market.
Gathering information from financial statements, filings, and other sources is its own challenge. Fortunately, there’s a single, searchable resource containing the intel that advisors need to make data-driven allocation decisions for their clients: Blue Vault’s research portal.
For almost two decades, Blue Vault has been at the forefront of assessing the performance, fees, and NAV of investments in private equity, private credit, and private real estate. With research that includes historical and current data, we are the leading source of data and insights into nontraded REITs, nontraded BDCs, interval funds, and tender offer funds.
Our members have a multitude of metrics at their fingertips that go deeper than the usual at-a-glance listings of capital raise, AUM, and distribution. To give you a better understanding of what we have to offer, allow me to open the Vault and show you around!
What’s Inside the Vault?
Industry Reviews and Individual Performance Data
Blue Vault members have several choices they can make when they first open the Vault.
They can go in-depth by accessing our quarterly reports — including our full industry reviews of nontraded REITs and nontraded BDCs containing topline assessments, financing outlooks, analyses of operating performance and dividend coverage, full-cycle listings, fee comparisons, and more — or our members can review the individual performance pages for the four main types of structured offerings that Blue Vault tracks.
Tools for Creating Custom Reports
Meet Mark. Mark is a registered investment advisor helping a new client who has an existing investment in the Angel Oak Strategic Credit Fund, an interval fund.
Today, Mark is researching the fund’s historical distributions and earnings and dividend coverage track record, so he headed straight for the fund’s individual performance report.
Mark is especially interested in the fund’s leverage and GAPP earnings payout ratio— key metrics that can be difficult to obtain without Vault access. As we revealed in a previous insights story, our individual performance profiles contain dozens of metrics and lots of information about the makeup of each fund.
Next, Mark uses the portal’s database search tool to compare the fund’s performance with that of other credit-focused interval funds.
On this day, the database reveals 86 other interval funds and their current-period capital raise, average distribution rate, and asset type. Mark then narrows his search by asset type and distribution rate to get targeted results.
As he selects each individual fund from the search results, Mark can build a custom report for his client on their existing investment and how it stacks up with other similar funds.
Historical Data
Meet Marcia. One of Marcia’s clients has asked her to research a particular fund sponsor.
Marcia is familiar with the oft-repeated warning to investors that “past performance is not indicative of future results.” However, she also recognizes that looking into a sponsor’s past performance can offer clues to their decision-making, especially during times of economic upheaval and change.
Fortunately for Marcia, Blue Vault’s database contains historical data for closed and active nontraded REITs and nontraded BDCs. Marcia had asked a wholesaler to provide her with some of the information she needs, but the wholesaler hasn’t been very responsive. With access to the portal, Marcia was quickly able to find everything she was looking for, including valuable contextual information included in the commentary for individual performance profiles.
Access to Blue Vault’s research portal:
• Streamlines due diligence, saving advisors time
• Provides invaluable insight into alts industry performance
• Informs advisors about different metrics and how they are calculated
• Provides advisors with the tools they need to educate clients about alternatives
Explore becoming a Blue Vault member and how our performance data can help build your advisory practice. Are you an asset manager, broker-dealer, or other entity? Contact us today to see how we can help you.
