Snowball offers managed funds

Crowdfunding platform Snowball has undergone a makeover and expanded its offering to include managed funds.

Tuesday, November 26th 2024, 7:24AM

by Kim Savage

Previously, Snowball specialised in equity crowdfunding for high-growth New Zealand companies, raising more than $200 million on its platform from its 55,000 investors.

As a broader “investment platform”, Snowball investors can also access three funds: Federation Alternative Investments II from private equity firm Federation Asset Management, which offers exposure to Asia Pacific mid-market private companies, the Salt Long Short Fund, managed by Salt Funds, and Private Debt Fund from Private Capital Group.

Director of Private Markets Bill O’Boyle said the company looked at what more they could offer investors and saw an opportunity to remove some of the barriers to investment in other asset classes.

“Private equity is a very strong performing asset class.”

“So that's probably the first thought of ours and private credit - obviously, there's an opportunity there, with the way that restrictions are somewhat forcing banks to step back in terms of where they where they lend, and obviously that in terms of the private credit market that's now developing in New Zealand, been in place in the US and Australia for a long time, that is a good opportunity set for private investors.”

Bill O’Boyle said the company intentionally took a concentrated approach to the new offering, and while Snowball would add to the list over time it would remain short.

“Our view is that a lot of the platforms around the world get very crowded in terms of, if you've got over 1000 different things to choose from, how do people actually choose?”

“So we just wanted to find top managers in each of those buckets, and what you'll see is us releasing different asset exposures.”

The company was already looking to the advisor channel to see how its technology could serve the profession, he said.

“We've been having conversations with advisor groups, and it's largely those independent ones that might have up to a billion dollars of client money, those really thinking properly about the portfolio construction for their clients and who understand the role of alternatives.”

“So we do see the ability for us to offer a solution to advisors if there are products they want to see, but their current solution doesn't allow them to easily obtain and deal with them.”

Along with the introduction of managed funds, the company relaunched its entire investment platform to create a “one-stop shop” for investors where they can track the performance of their portfolio.

Snowball co-founder and managing director Simeon Burnett said a well-diversified investment portfolio was critical to growing wealth, but there were barriers in New Zealand to getting into the right assets, with some funds only accessible to institutional or high net worth investors.

“Snowball is solving the access problem by bringing best in class professionally managed alternative funds to our investors with a goal of making simple access to a better suite of investment options the industry standard.”

“We have focused on a unique set of funds that not only provide investors with new types of exposure, but are also liquid, meaning that investors can build a position over time, or if needed sell down.”

Tags: Snowball