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What stops Fidelity or Schwab, who manage both RIA and private wealth assets, from entering the alternative IRA space?

Tim Flannery

Co-founder & CEO at Passthrough

As I understand it, originally, you used to be able to do some type of investing like that through Fidelity, but it's really operationally intensive. It’s even operationally intensive with Alto and some of the other ones that need to go figure this out or how to go bring them in because ultimately, they need to execute these docs on behalf of their clients. And there are a lot of rules and regulations attached to that.

I believe that Fidelity and those other groups stopped processing investments like that because it was just too much for them to handle. It's not to say that they can't go do that in the future. My guess is maybe you will see that, and maybe you'll see an acquisition somewhere, but there hasn't been any interest in it. I can't tell you if it's because they think there's some risk appetite that they don't want to handle, or if it's all because the operations of it are just too much to deal with. I mean, the alt side of Alto has been big. The crypto side has been huge. I don't know if it's a crypto versus alt thing. I don't have a great answer beyond that.

Find this answer in Tim Flannery, co-founder of Passthrough, on building TurboTax for private fund investing
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