Mara
Making private markets public
Your journey to achieving passive long term wealth through exclusive private market funds
Join the Smart Money and be part of tomorrow's growth, by accessing exclusive private market funds typically available only to institutional investors
Secure access to funds with commitments as low as £5,000 compared to usual minimum commitment amounts of >£5m
Sign up to join our community in minutes for free
The minimum total investment commitment to our funds is £25,000, which is typically drawn by our fund managers over a four year period. We take 25% of this capital at day 1 (£5,000) to secure your subscription to a particular fund
Save, learn and network through our private markets platform
Our Vision
We created Mara so that individuals can benefit from the huge financial potential of private markets that to date have only been available to institutional investors and the wealthy.
Mara opens up these opportunities for you.
What our investors say
Lewis W
Director, AdTech
"With Mara I can fund my investment automatically each month from my salary, which fits into my long term savings plan"
David K
Doctor, General Practitioner
"The best high growth private companies are never available to invest through crowdfunding platforms, instead funded by reputable venture funds, which Mara helped me get access to"
Outperformance
The data doesn't lie - private capital has consistently outperformed even the strongest public equity index over the last 20 years.
Smart money institutional investors allocate between 30-40% whilst individuals allocate less than 5% - we're here to change that!
Over 70% of institutions are increasing their allocations to private markets as indicated by a recent survey - Numis, Dec 2021.
Our Conviction
Outperformance
Resilience
Innovation
Impact
Scroll across to see why we are convinced that private markets will grow to be a dominant form of saving for individual investors
Why private funds open their doors to us
Individual investors are an administrative pain for private fund managers in comparison to institutional investors (pension funds and insurance companies), so they simply choose to ignore them. The Mara team's innovative solutions and platform tackles the following points, making it easy for private funds to accept retail investor money:
Investor eligibility and compliance
Investor eligibility and compliance
There are strict regulations around private market funds which make it difficult for funds to deal with investors generally, even more so for individuals than institutional investors. For most private funds investors need to be "sophisticated" or "accredited" in the eyes of local regulators to be able to access closed ended funds. Our efficient onboarding process enables individuals to verify their understanding of private funds and the risks associated in minutes, thereby satisfying regulators about their suitability.
All financial operatives must also satisfy regulatory obligations around Know Your Customer ("KYC") and Anti-Money Laundering ("AML"). These checks are much harder for individuals than professional institutions, thus being the major reason why fund managers refuse individual investors to access their funds. We do these checks ourselves, relieving fund managers of this burden.
Tidying up shareholder list
Having hundreds of small investors on a fund's shareholder list is undesirable for fund managers optically and also makes their fund less appealing to larger investors, who want their fund to feel "institutional". By aggregating many small investors via a feeder structure to invest in their fund, we convert hundreds of small investors into one single investor on a fund's shareholder list, thus solving this problem.
Tidying up shareholder list
Client relations and reporting
Private funds that are used to dealing with a small number of large institutional investors are simply not set up to deal with hundreds of smaller individual investors. One individual is the same level of work as one large institution but bringing far less revenue to them, so many private funds choose not to engage. Our platform provides an efficient means to provide ongoing reporting and investment updates, as well as dealing with any questions that arise.
Client relations and reporting
Onboarding process
The process for investing in private funds is different from investing in a mutual fund or listed fund with stocks and bonds in it. Investment comes in the form of a commitment / subscription to provide a fund manager capital over the investment period of a fund (typically 4 years) when needed, rather than 100% of your capital being taken at day 1 to be invested. Investors thus need to provide bank account details and sign subscription forms, which can be onerous. We handle that process and enable investors to sign and fill in these details electronically via our platform, thus saving both parties time.
Onboarding process
Cash management
Due to investor capital being funded over a 4-5 year period by fund managers and not invested at day 1 unlike with public markets, managing these "capital calls" can be difficult for private fund managers. This is fine for institutional investors who are used to this process, but it is harder for individual investors and presents a risk of them defaulting on their commitment.
To manage this risk effectively, we ask investors to provide 25% of their capital at day 1 as a form of deposit. For UK investors we are also able to set up mechanisms to automatically take capital from their account on a monthly basis to fund future investments, making it easier for them to tie their investments from any monthly net salary earnings.