Alternative investment solutions provider iCapital Network has received an undisclosed investment led by BlackRock.
Other backers to the round included Morgan Stanley Investment Management and USB Financial Services.
The latest investment brings total funding into the company to over $50m. Before this funding round, the company disclosed capital injections totalled $20m.
iCapital gives investment advisors, broker-dealers, private banks, family offices and other sophisticated investors access to alternative investment opportunities like hedge funds and private equity funds.
Its end-to-end technology automates unique subscription, administration, and reporting processes in these investment types, helping to bypass these complicated procedures. So far, the company has surpassed $2.25bn in private fund subscriptions for 3,500 investors across 45 funds, according to the company.
The capital will be used to continue the development of its platform as a wealth management community and a channel?between high-net-worth investors and capital managers.
Morgan Stanley Investment Management head Dan Simkowitz said, ?Endowments and pension funds have long embraced alternatives as an important component of their overall investment programs. Many high-net-worth investors, in our view, are under-allocated to alternatives relative to their institutional counterparts.
?iCapital technology and investment platform successfully removes many of the operational impediments that high-net-worth investors face when seeking to increase their commitments to these strategies. In doing so, we believe that iCapital has significantly improved the client experience for individual investors and those who serve them.p>
Morgan Stanley plans to leverage iCapital technology to access advisors and their clients, but to also automate aspects of its private fund operations.
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