First, these funds typically require you to work with a Registered Investment Advisor ("RIA") to buy them, so they aren’t even open to individuals going to them directly.
But more importantly, we can simplify the process to access these funds compared with other RIAs. If you want meaningful diversification (not just of loans, but also of managers and strategies), then you typically invest in multiple funds. While buying many funds directly is technically possible with other RIAs, each purchase can involve significant paperwork, and it may be more efficient with Heron. Rather than signing N sub-docs, sending N wires, getting N tax forms (which are usually K-1s rather than 1099s) issued by multiple fund entities, and hitting N minimum investments for each fund, Heron eliminates these burdens. The tax forms for your investments are issued directly by Heron Finance, simplifying administration. You sign one set of docs, get one tax form, and we have a low $10K overall minimum.
Additionally, some underlying funds are only open to "Qualified Clients" ($2.2M+ net worth) or "Qualified Purchasers" ($5M+ net worth). However, we can enable exposure to these funds so long as you are an Accredited Investor. By leveraging our status as a larger institution, we're able to access more opportunities that would otherwise be out of reach for many individuals.
Beyond this, because we can aggregate capital across all of our clients, we can get the best share class (the "Institutional" share class), which typically requires $1M minimum investment and can save you about 0.8% annually (exact amounts vary by fund), plus we eliminate the initial "load fees" which a broker or RIA may charge you. Those can be 3% upfront or more.
Even before you buy the funds, you’ll want to do diligence on the funds, and Heron helps you with that too. Using our scorecard, you can research the funds, and then we can give you a portfolio from among all the funds you like, customized to your yield objectives.
In sum, Heron gets you much greater diversification of already-vetted managers, with far less hassle.