Philadelphia area-based ALTZ Investment Strategies (ALTZ) has launched an alternative investment platform aimed at providing accredited individual investors with access to private opportunities.
These investments, usually reserved for institutional investors, can be accessed through the ALTZ website, where users register as accredited or aspirational investors, open a brokerage account, browse and, if eligible, allocate funds toward featured private placements. Once ALTZ-registered investors have collectively raised the capital required to invest, their money is aggregated and allocated to the company offering the private placement.
“We wanted to provide individual investors the chance to not only view private placement opportunities, but to access and take advantage of investments that otherwise may have been difficult to source, vet and track. ALTZ’s platform does just that,” says ALTZ chief executive officer Jim McDonald.
Created to make investing in real estate, renewable energy, private equity and liquid alternatives as accessible and convenient as online investing, ALTZ provides members with a process to open an online brokerage account where they can manage and hold their private investments. The company has chosen VIA Folio, the private investing division of Folio Institutional, to provide securities custody and brokerage account services to the ALTZ platform.
ALTZ’s inaugural offering is a portfolio of utility-scale solar energy projects. AIS Solar Utility Income I provides impact investors with the opportunity to own a portfolio of utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) projects. All electricity produced by the projects will be sold to high-credit, quality utility companies under long-term, fixed-rate power purchase agreements.
“Our first offering is a win-win for investors who want to fund environmentally and socially responsible projects while diversifying their portfolios,” says Gregg Flinn (pictured), ALTZ’s chief investment officer, adding that a 2015 SEC report determined just 301,000 of the approximately 12.4 million accredited U.S. investors were active participants in the private investment marketplace. “Setting ALTZ further apart is our long-term vision to connect private companies with this untapped audience that fuels the American economy,” he says.
