Clearstead Expands Partnership With GLASfunds to Enhance its ClearAccess Private Markets Investment Platform

Clearstead, a large financial advisory firm serving wealthy families and institutions; and GLASfunds, an alternative investment platform for financial advisors; today announced significant enhancements to Clearstead’s  private market investments platform ‘ClearAccess.’ 

ClearAccess is a fully integrated platform that combines Clearstead’s institutional investment process and private markets investments manager selection capabilities. Since 2011, Clearstead has partnered with GLASfunds to provide a vehicle for streamlined access to private market investments that were once difficult and burdensome for clients to access.

Clearstead and GLASfunds are partnering to provide an enhanced solution to clients with the objective of lowering costs, improving transparency, and consolidating tax reporting, among other things. The ClearAccess platform will allow qualified clients to invest in Clearstead selected private market investments through a new Clearstead client dedicated fund on the GLASfunds platform. The enhancements further position Clearstead as a leader in providing innovative and cost-effective solutions for qualified clients to access private market investment strategies. 

“The ClearAccess platform will further enhance the ability of Clearstead’s advisors to serve qualified clients with scalable customization, operational efficiency, and institutional access to high-quality private market investments,” said Brad Knapp, CEO at Clearstead. “Clearstead and GLASfunds have partnered for several years to deliver customized alternative investment access to Clearstead clients. This next evolution of ClearAccess builds on that foundation, leveraging GLASfunds’ infrastructure to scale Clearstead’s institutional manager selection and strategy design capabilities.” 

“These enhancements to ClearAccess represent the next generation of our commitment to providing clients with thoughtful, institutional-quality private market investment solutions,” said Aneet Deshpande, CFA, Chief Investment Officer at Clearstead. “After exploring the market, we chose the GLASfunds platform to deliver the level of customization, scale, and efficiency we needed.”

“GLASfunds is proud to expand its partnership with Clearstead through the continued improvements of ClearAccess,” said Michael Maroon, Chief Executive Officer at GLASfunds. “Our platform is purpose-built to support firms like Clearstead that are delivering sophisticated alternative investment strategies at scale.”