to offer retail investors greater access to the Canadian private real estate market – an asset class that is typically held by institutional and ultrahigh-net-worth investors.
Kelly Creelman, Fidelity’s senior vice-president of products, said the company began adding other asset classes several years ago to begin to diversify its investment funds more broadly, such as including high yield, floating rate debt, emerging market debt, and commodities. Over the last two decades, private real estate assets under management have been steadily growing globally, jumping to about US$1-trillion in 2019 from US$64-billion in 2000, according to a report by London-based Prequin, a data provider for alternative assets.
However, unlike some of the private funds – where investors are locked in for longer time horizons – Fidelity’s investments are daily liquid funds, meaning they can be cashed out at any time, said Andrew Clee, vice-president of product at Fidelity. As well, under regulatory rules, only a certain percentage of the real estate portfolio can be allocated to the retail investment pools.