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August 08, 2014 at 06:29 AM
As an answer to the growing interest among self-directed IRA investors and a growing trend in equity-based crowdfunding platforms, PENSCO launched The PENSCO Marketplace on Wednesday.
The Marketplace is a platform displaying a network of providers, products and services for alternative asset investors — with the goal of making it easier for clients to locate and invest in private placement opportunities.
“Equity-based crowdfunding is an area that we are watching closely, as it continues to gain traction among self-directed IRA investors who are knowledgeable and passionate about investing in this space,” said Kelly Rodriques, CEO of PENSCO, in a press release. “As more of these platforms come to market, we want to provide exposure to these investments for our existing and prospective clients.”
While PENSCO’s focus is on self-directed, accredited investors, more and more clients are coming to the firm through RIAs, which now generate about 20% of new account openings, Rodriques recently told ThinkAdvisor.
Where PENSCO once saw a majority of client investments held in the real estate category, Christopher Orr writes in an Aug. 4 blog post that more and more investors are participating in private equity deals, largely thanks to the growing popularity of equity-based crowdfunding websites.
“Today, over 50% of the new investments we see are in private equity, and a growing number of those deals are discovered through crowdfunding platforms,” writes Orr, a relationship manager for PENSCO. “Our customers love that these sites allow them to look beyond their current deal to the next one — something that wasn’t so easy to do before equity-based crowdfunding came into the picture.”
As Orr points out in his blog, equity-based crowdfunding platforms are only two years old. They’ve been around since 2012 and have since raised roughly $400 million.
