Macquarie Investment Management and Wilshire Associates Announce Plan to Bring Private Market Solutions to Mass Affluent Investors

Macquarie Investment Management (Macquarie) and Wilshire Associates (Wilshire) today announced that they will partner to provide mass affluent investors with access to institutional-quality diversified private markets, including private equity, private debt, alternative yield, and private real assets.

“Mass affluent investors maintain modest allocations to alternative investments even though the benefits of diversification are well known,” said Shawn Lytle, global head of Macquarie Investment Management. “Together we are striving to provide private market access for a fast-growing class of retail investors. Wilshire Associates, a trusted fiduciary with a reputation as a skilled allocator for some of the world’s most sophisticated institutional investors, is an ideal partner to bring this vision to life.”

Private markets have been out of reach for sophisticated investors due to a complex mix of legal and structural limitations, including large minimums, fees, retirement plan ineligibility, cumbersome tax reporting, cash drag, and gates. Macquarie and Wilshire will aim to overcome these barriers by providing solutions that offer an improved investor and advisor experience along with increased access to diversification into private markets.

“Private market strategies have historically offered higher returns, lower volatility, and more diversification than public markets¹,” said Neil Siegel, global head of marketing and product, Macquarie Investment Management. “We are excited to provide mass affluent investors with new sources of diversification and exposure to private markets with a dramatically improved client experience.”

Wilshire Associates has a long-standing history of selecting managers across all major private market strategies, with a focus on mid-market and smaller funds where significant opportunities with the potential to outperform exist. Wilshire has decades of experience sourcing and allocating to best-in-class private markets investments for its institutional clients.

“Working with Macquarie, we are combining the rigor of Wilshire’s investment experience with Macquarie’s deep investor insights and expertise to create differentiated private markets access for intermediaries and their clients,” said Jason Schwarz, chief operating officer of Wilshire Associates. “Together we are providing access to the same private markets-focused investment team and resources previously only available to Wilshire’s large institutional clients.”

For each publicly traded company in the United States, there exists four times as many companies backed by private equity and venture capital funds. Over the past two decades, public markets have shrunk by nearly half, while private equity net asset values have grown by more than seven times. In addition to an expanded opportunity set, the private markets offer lower valuations relative to public markets, and today’s low interest rates offer a low cost of capital for private markets investors. With the confluence of these factors, we believe private market investing is well positioned over the long term.

It is important to note, overall, the risk profile of private market investment strategies is higher than that of other asset classes. These risks may include, but are not limited to, liquidity risk and lack of a secondary market to trade securities; management risk; concentration and non-diversification risk; lack of transparency; and volatility.

This communication does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any specific investment product sponsored by, or investment services provided by Macquarie Investment Management or its affiliates, or Wilshire Associates or its affiliates.

About Macquarie Investment Management

Macquarie Investment Management is a global asset manager with offices in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia. As active managers, we prioritize autonomy and accountability at the team level in pursuit of opportunities that matter for clients. Our conviction-based, long-term approach has led institutional and individual clients to entrust us to manage more than $US242.4 billion in assets as of Sept. 30, 2020. In the US, retail investors recognize our Delaware Funds^® by Macquarie family of funds as one of the longest-standing mutual fund families, with more than 80 years in existence. Macquarie Investment Management is a division of Macquarie Asset Management, a global asset manager with more than $US397.4 billion in assets under management as of Sept. 30, 2020.

About Wilshire Associates

Wilshire Associates is a leading global financial services firm dedicated to improving outcomes for investors worldwide. An independent firm since its founding in 1972, Wilshire advises on over $1 trillion in assets and manages $73 billion in assets as of June 30, 2020. Specializing in innovative investment solutions, consulting services, and multi-asset analytics, Wilshire serves more than 500 institutional and intermediary clients worldwide from 10 offices around the globe. For more information about Wilshire, visit www.wilshire.com or follow @WilshireAssoc.

¹ Source: Cambridge Associates and Factor Research. Private Markets represented by Cambridge Associates US Private Equity Index and public markets represented by the S&P 500 Index returns from 1994 to 2018 and volatility from 1994 to 2019. Diversification statement sourced from Pitchbook, National Venture Capital Association 2020 Yearbook, data as of Dec. 31, 2019. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Diversification neither guarantees a gain nor protects against a loss.

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