Operator-grade research, written by operators.

A practitioner's framework for valuing private investments and surviving the audit. Every quarter, positions that don't trade — venture stakes, buyout equity, real estate, direct loans, life settlement policies — must be assigned a fair value that will flow into investor capital accounts, management fees, and audited financial statements. This 28-page whitepaper lays out the ASC 820 framework, the guidance stack auditors accept, and how it's applied asset class by asset class. The bar has been rising: rewritten auditing standards, PCAOB inspections, SEC examination priorities, and pointed official-sector commentary on private credit. A smaller manager can't out-staff this environment, but can out-organize it.

Independent RIAs and small family offices in the U.S. face growing pressure from fee compression, model-portfolio commoditization, and the limits of traditional 60/40 allocations. Alternative investments are becoming a crucial differentiator: they improve risk-adjusted returns, expand the efficient frontier, and lift RIA enterprise value. This whitepaper makes the case for alts in wealth management, examines the channels available to RIAs (BDCs, interval funds, alternative platforms, and proprietary funds), and lays out the operational considerations that come with launching a vehicle in-house.