CAIS: Platform Profile

Overview

CAIS is an alternative-investment and structured-note platform built primarily for financial intermediaries, not a mass-market retail investing app.

That distinction should lead the review.

Current CAIS privacy disclosures say the platform is provided exclusively to eligible:

• registered investment advisory firms;
• broker-dealers;
• a limited number of institutional family offices;
• banks;
• trusts.

CAIS describes those firms as Platform Clients and says it operates in a business-to-business context. An individual investor can ultimately own an investment sourced through CAIS, but the normal access path runs through an eligible financial firm rather than a consumer opening a standalone CAIS brokerage account.

The current marketplace spans:

• private equity;
• private debt;
• real estate;
• infrastructure;
• hedge funds;
• structured notes.

Fund wrappers can include interval funds, registered '40 Act funds, non-traded REITs, BDCs, limited partnerships, and other product-specific structures.

That breadth is useful, but it creates the central analytical problem: CAIS is the access and operating platform; it is not one investment product with one minimum, one fee, one liquidity rule, or one investor-eligibility standard.

May fit better for

• financial advisors building an alternatives allocation for eligible clients;
• wealth firms that want one workflow for discovery, subscription, capital calls, distributions, and reporting;
• investors who already work through an RIA, broker-dealer, family office, bank, or trust using CAIS;
• clients who want access to multiple private-market asset classes;
• investors comfortable reading fund-specific offering documents;
• advisors who value third-party due diligence and product filtering.

May fit less well for

• do-it-yourself investors who want a direct consumer account;
• investors seeking one platform-wide minimum;
• users who expect one flat all-in fee;
• investors who require daily liquidity;
• investors who assume every CAIS product has the same accreditation requirement;
• clients who do not want an intermediary relationship.

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CAIS is a platform ecosystem, not one regulated entity

The current legal structure should remain separated.

Current FINRA BrokerCheck identifies CAIS Capital LLC as registered with the SEC and FINRA and not currently suspended. The current CAIS Form CRS describes CAIS Capital as the broker-dealer providing services in connection with securities offerings available through the affiliated portal.

CAIS Advisors is a separate SEC-registered investment adviser.

The regulatory status of one affiliate does not transfer automatically to every other affiliate.

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Access is advisor-led and business-to-business

Current CAIS privacy language is unusually explicit:

• Direct mass market consumer platform: No
• Business to business platform: Yes
• Eligible platform clients:
• registered investment advisory firms
• broker-dealers
• limited institutional family offices
• banks
• trusts

This does not mean every end investor is institution-sized.

It means the platform relationship is normally between CAIS and an eligible financial intermediary.

The end client can still be a person whose advisor uses CAIS to source and administer an investment.

A review should therefore avoid language such as:

"Open a CAIS account and buy a private-equity fund directly."

That overstates the consumer-access model.

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Product eligibility is not universal

CAIS Marketplace lets advisors filter products by accreditation level and other criteria.

The current home-office marketplace states that products can span a spectrum of accreditation levels.

Some registered products can be available more broadly.

Private funds can require accredited-investor status, qualified-purchaser status, or other eligibility tests.

Structured notes can have their own suitability and account requirements.

One client qualifying for one CAIS product does not establish eligibility for every product on the platform.

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There is no defensible platform-wide minimum

CAIS emphasizes that many products have lower minimums than investors might encounter through traditional institutional channels.

That does not establish one current minimum for the entire marketplace.

A registered interval fund, non-traded REIT, private limited partnership, and structured note can each use different minimums.

"CAIS minimum investment."

The offering document controls.

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"Free access" is not the same as a free investment

The advisor-facing CAIS page describes free, turnkey access to the marketplace.

That statement concerns access to the platform.

It should not be converted into:

• All in investor fee: $0

Current CAIS Form CRS states that CAIS Capital does not assess brokerage trading fees to clients for the relevant services, while CAIS Capital can receive:

• placement-agency fees;
• introducer fees;
• marketing fees.

Affiliates can also receive compensation for portal administration or product sponsorship.

Underlying products can charge:

• management fees;
• incentive allocations or carried interest;
• fund expenses;
• servicing costs;
• acquisition or financing expenses;
• redemption-related costs;
• structured-note economics;
• other offering-specific charges.

The correct fee question is not:

"What does CAIS charge?"

It is:

"What is the complete economic stack for this specific product, including platform/broker compensation, sponsor economics, fund expenses, and advisor fees?"

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Mercer due diligence is a research input, not a guarantee

CAIS states that Mercer due diligence and ratings are available for nearly all products in the marketplace.

That can reduce the research burden for an advisor.

It does not mean:

• Mercer guarantees performance;
• CAIS guarantees principal;
• a product cannot fail;
• a private manager's valuation is certain;
• liquidity will be available when requested.

Institutional due diligence can improve the quality of information.

It cannot remove investment risk.

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Custody is integrated, not universal

CAIS states that the marketplace integrates with leading custodians and reporting providers.

That is an operational feature.

It should not be rendered as:

• CAIS is universal custodian: Yes

The investor's actual assets can be held through the applicable custodian, broker, transfer agent, fund administrator, issuer, or other product-specific structure.

The legal owner and custody chain should be read from the actual investment documents.

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Liquidity depends on the wrapper

A core CAIS review should resist a single liquidity label beyond the platform-wide negative statement:

• Universal daily liquidity: No
• Universal guaranteed liquidity: No

Examples:

• an interval fund can offer periodic repurchases subject to limits;
• a private limited partnership can lock capital for years;
• a non-traded REIT can use a limited redemption program;
• a structured note can mature on a defined date but still carry issuer credit and resale risk;
• a BDC or registered fund can have different trading or repurchase mechanics.

CAIS makes multiple wrappers easier to access.

It does not make those wrappers economically interchangeable.

Assessment

CAIS is best understood as institutional-style alternatives infrastructure brought into the independent wealth channel.

Its value is breadth plus workflow:

• discovery;
• diligence;
• product comparison;
• subscription;
• KYC/AML;
• capital-call administration;
• distributions;
• reporting;
• custodian integration.

The trade-off is that a platform review can become misleading if it tries to compress dozens of different investment structures into one headline minimum, fee, or liquidity score.

The most accurate ROIStreet treatment keeps two layers separate:

1. CAIS as platform, broker, adviser, and workflow infrastructure;
2. the underlying investment as the source of most economic risk and many of the material fees.