New Firm Launches Advisor-Focused Solution for Private Markets
EPIC is focusing on advisors now, but the “goal is to open up this asset class to a much larger universe of investors,” its managing principal says.
The new investment management firm Evolution Private Investment Collective (EPIC) says it is looking to bring financial advisors, their clients and other new participants to the growing $7.3 trillion private investment market through a new solution.
“Advisors and their clients are our primary focus today,” according to Alec Garza, managing principal and co-founder of the Denver company.
The company is addressing the “multiple challenges of individual investors,” he told ThinkAdvisor, adding: “As we continue to build out this infrastructure, our goal is to open up this asset class to a much larger universe of investors.”
Focus of Strategy
The EPIC investment strategy focuses on private fund managers and opportunities typically found in the lower middle market that the company says are best positioned to provide more appealing returns to advisors and investors than are available in public markets.
EPIC’s strategy offers lower than usual minimums for investors, while also reducing concentration risk via diversification across 20 to 30 different managers within the portfolios, the company says.
“Our goal for 2021 is to build awareness about the investment opportunity in private markets and to educate financial advisors with whom we are similarly aligned on how they can introduce these asset classes into their client portfolios through our holistic solutions,” Garza explained.
“Following the successful execution of our strategy inside of” the $2.5 billion multi-family IWP Family Office, “we saw an opportunity to expand our reach to a wider universe of advisors and their clients,” according to Garza.
IWP was founded in 2005 by Charlie Willhoit, who is on the EPIC investment committee, Garza said. Garza and Willhoit co-founded EPIC with principals Kevin McCabe and Tamara Ward.
Although IWP is the largest advisor client that EPIC works with, Garza told ThinkAdvisor: “We’re in conversations with the several firms now that we’ve gone public” with the EPIC launch.
EPIC’s flagship fund series was developed to “empower advisors to focus on achieving their clients’ financial objectives through a diversified allocation to private markets,” it says. Its first fund closed in 2018 at $52 million. That fund was created by the same investment team from IWP that founded EPIC, said Garza, who developed its share class structure as an analyst.
EPIC’s investment team is “looking for new opportunities with managers who have developed strong competitive advantages in niche markets,” according to Garza.
“We hope to identify 3-4 new managers, in the sub-$1 billion range, with whom we can invest,” he told ThinkAdvisor. “We will be expanding the team with an additional analyst” in the second half of 2021, he said.