Alex ZonneveldGetting into a strategy is only the beginning, because access also means how you hold your capital, how you see it and who is able to act on it.
In wealth management, access is usually taken to mean whether you can get into a strategy at all, but real access has several more parts to it. It covers who you arrive through, what form you hold the capital in, how and when you can see it, who is able to act on it and what the whole arrangement costs. Good access lets you hold and act on your capital in the way you choose without handing over control in exchange, whereas poor access is the kind that’s easy to get into and hard to see inside. AI is changing the way people reach their money very quickly, which makes it more important than ever to know who controls that interface.
Why access used to mean getting in
For decades the most sought-after strategies sat behind high minimums, closed books and long due diligence processes, so family offices got in and most other people didn’t. That’s a large part of the reason the average family office holds around 42% of its portfolio in alternatives, according to the UBS Global Family Office Report 2026.
That gap has been narrowing. Alternatives managers including Hamilton Lane, KKR and Apollo now offer tokenised feeder funds to qualified wealth clients, according to Citi, and in March the US Department of Labor proposed a rule that would make it easier for 401(k) plans to include private credit and private equity. Semi-liquid funds have already brought private markets to millions of people who could never have reached them a decade ago.
Getting in, in other words, has become much easier, but the other parts of access haven’t kept pace, and 2026 showed what that can cost. Many people who found it easy to get into semi-liquid private credit funds discovered, when they wanted to leave, that they’d been sold the entrance without the exit and without much visibility of what the funds actually held.
The six parts of access
The first part is entry, which is not just whether you’re allowed into a strategy but whether you’re allowed in at a size that makes sense for you, given the minimums, the capacity left and the eligibility rules.
The second is the route you arrive by, whether that’s directly, through an advisor, through a placement agent or curator, or through someone you already know and trust. Each route can add a party who is paid and who may be able to see your position, and you should know about both.
The third is the form in which you hold the capital, whether that’s a share in a pooled fund, a separately managed account, a vault you sign for or a token. Each of these gives you different rights over the underlying assets, a different degree of transparency and a different way out.
The fourth is visibility, which is the difference between a quarterly PDF prepared by the manager and live positions you can trace back to the custodian yourself, with every number showing where it came from.
The fifth is action, meaning who is able to act on the capital and how. That includes whether you can request a redemption when you want to, whether you can require a second or third signature, whether someone you trust can see your position without being able to move it, and whether an AI agent can act for you and, if so, within what limits.
The sixth is cost, which goes well beyond the management fee to include introducer, platform and placement fees that are often far less visible. Some groups of newly wealthy employees are already making wealth firms disclose fees before they’ll consider them. Anthropic asked the firms pitching for its employees’ business to set out their fees and services up front, and one group of about 100 SpaceX employees reportedly negotiated an annual fee of under 0.5%.
Taken together, these six parts explain why access you can’t see inside isn’t really access at all, but exposure to whatever happens to be in there.
The interface to money is moving to AI
The way people reach their capital is changing faster now than at any point since money first moved online. In September Anthropic launched Claude for Financial Advisors, with connectors to Addepar, BlackRock, iCapital, Orion and others, so that an advisor can ask about a client’s portfolio in plain language. In May Robinhood let its customers connect AI agents such as Claude and ChatGPT to a dedicated account for live stock trading. It won’t be long before a great many people reach their capital mainly through a conversation rather than a dashboard.
That’s a real improvement in access, because being able to ask what you could redeem before April, and what it would cost you to do so, is far better than working through four separate offering documents. It also raises the question McKinsey put at the centre of its analysis after the wealth stock sell-off in February, which is who controls “the primary interface through which permission to act is granted.” If that interface belongs to a platform, the platform decides what you can see and what can be done. If it belongs to you, then any interface, whether human or AI, works within the limits you’ve set.
What good access looks like
Good access tends to look a lot like the arrangements family offices make for themselves. You arrive through someone you already know and can see who else is being paid along the way. You hold the assets in a form you control, with a custodian and under your own signature. You can see your positions and their values whenever you like and trace each number back to its source, and you can add co-signers, give someone view-only access or allow a tool to act within strict limits. And the cost is itemised before you commit to anything.
None of that requires a nine-figure balance sheet anymore. What it requires is infrastructure that’s built around the owner of the capital rather than around the product being sold.
What AI changes
AI makes access much more personal, because you can ask questions in plain language, get summaries in whatever form suits you and receive alerts that matter to your situation rather than to an average client, at any hour and in any language. At the same time it makes the structure underneath more important, because an AI interface is only as good as what it’s allowed to see and what it’s allowed to do. It should be able to show you everything about your capital, but it should only be able to act in ways you’ve approved, and it should never be the thing that holds the keys.
How MakeBanc handles access
On MakeBanc you arrive by invite from a manager or curator you already know, and managers can allow a placement agent to invite their own network into a single strategy without either side’s clients being shown to anyone else. Your assets sit with an institutional custodian in a vault you sign for, and the manager can trade them but can never move them, while MakeBanc itself never holds the keys.
Every number is labelled as self-reported, observed or verified, you can check custody on-chain yourself, and you can see exactly what a manager is able to see about you and what they can’t. You request redemptions yourself and can see when they’ll settle, you can sign alone or set two or three named signers, and every fee is itemised on a stated base, including any curator or introducer fee and who pays it. MakeBanc doesn’t choose strategies for you or act on your capital. Its job is to give you access on your own terms.
Frequently asked questions
What does access mean in wealth management? Access covers much more than getting into a strategy. It includes who you arrive through, what form you hold the capital in, how you can see it, who is able to act on it and what it costs, and good access lets you hold and act on your capital the way you choose without giving up control.
How is AI changing access to wealth management? AI is becoming the interface through which people reach their money. Advisors can now query portfolios in plain language and customers can connect AI agents to trading accounts, which makes access easier and makes it more important that the owner, rather than the platform, controls what the AI can see and do.
Are alternatives becoming more accessible? Yes. Tokenised feeder funds from managers such as Hamilton Lane, KKR and Apollo, semi-liquid funds and a proposed US rule for alternatives in 401(k) plans are all widening access, although the liquidity, visibility and cost terms vary a great deal and are worth checking before committing.
Sources
- UBS, Global Family Office Report 2026; TechCrunch, Family offices are clamoring for AI investments
- Citi GPS, Tokenization 2030, June 2026
- Morrison Foerster, DOL proposes rule on 401(k) alternative assets, April 2026
- Kitces, The Latest In Financial AdvisorTech, October 2026
- Robinhood Newsroom, Robinhood is now open to agents, 27 May 2026
- McKinsey & Company, The signal in the sell-off, April 2026
- The Wealth Advisor, Goldman, BofA and JPMorgan are already fighting over Anthropic’s new millionaires, September 2026
- InvestmentNews, Choreo eyes OpenAI, Anthropic employee wealth after SpaceX haul, July 2026
MakeBanc is a technology platform that connects investors with independent asset managers. MakeBanc does not provide investment advice, custody services or banking services. Nothing here is an offer or invitation to allocate to any strategy.