The rise of alternative investments in wealth management is undeniable. According to McKinsey, alternatives now represent nearly 15% of global AUM and over 40% of industry revenues driven by growing demand for income, diversification, and uncorrelated return streams. Yet, despite this growth, many financial advisors still face challenges in adopting alternatives at scale. The reasons are rarely about belief in the asset class. Instead, the bottlenecks exist upstream at the enterprise level.
For advisors to successfully integrate private markets into their practice, they need more than just interest, they need support. Most don’t have the time or resources to compare available funds, dig into the nuances of an investment option, or stay current on an increasingly complex and rapidly evolving product landscape. That’s why enterprise-level infrastructure—centralized research, curated product workflows, compliance oversight, and scalable education—is essential. Without it, individual advisor efforts often stall before they start.
Enterprises that empower advisors to sell and service alternatives effectively share a few characteristics:
- Centralized Due Diligence: They streamline research by curating approved product shelves, standardizing memos and comparisons, and embedding compliance frameworks that satisfy Reg BI and other oversight obligations.
- Integrated Technology: Platforms that integrate private market data (like Hamilton Lane and Blue Vault) with generative AI, due diligence workflows, and product education shorten the learning curve and make insights accessible to the front line.
- Role-Based Collaboration: Enterprises that enable coordinated workflows across research, compliance, sales, and advisor support remove friction and reduce redundancy. Shared notes, endorsement tracking, approval flows, and audit trails foster both alignment and accountability.
When the Enterprise Leads, Advisors Grow
Wealth management firms that prioritize these elements can see a transformation in advisor engagement with alternatives:
- Improved Client Conversations: Advisors who receive allocation guidance, product comparisons, and client-ready summaries are more confident and more successful in client discussions.
- Stronger Distribution Power: Firms with structured product curation and education drive better take-down rates from asset managers and gain access to exclusive fund allocations
- Higher Compliance Assurance: Automating compliance inputs like investor qualification requirements, liquidity windows, and redemption schedules reduces operational risk and builds trust internally.
What’s changing now is the scale at which these enterprise functions can be delivered. Platforms that leverage generative AI and machine learning now make it possible to deliver personalized, real-time insights to thousands of advisors simultaneously curating fund recommendations, preparing investment memos, and tracking advisor-fund engagement automatically.
This is not about replacing human judgment but accelerating and augmenting it. Firms that effectively combine advisor expertise with centralized intelligence and digital tooling are best positioned to capitalize on the next wave of growth in alternative investments.
Enterprises are no longer just gatekeepers of product access, they are catalysts of advisor productivity. By investing in infrastructure, education, and intelligent tooling, they enable advisors to do what they do best: provide tailored, high-impact advice to clients.
And in the complex, nuanced world of alternatives, that enterprise lift is not optional. It is the only path to scalable, advisor-led growth.
Want to see how the right enterprise infrastructure can turn advisor interest into action? Schedule a demo of Helix and explore how you can drive scalable, advisor-led growth in alternatives.