Sharing Is Caring
If the art world is any indication, fractional ownership markets can also end up, well, highly fragmented. The art market is no stranger to the involvement of investment funds in acquiring works, and in 2017, a firm called Masterworks LLC made a splash with its fractional investment offering. Since then, however, pricing structures and investment interest have evolved, leading to several new entrants, including recent newcomers InversionArt Inc. and aShareX Inc.
Alan Snyder, aShareX’s founder and CEO, says the platform grew out of his prior work creating marketplaces for other financial products, including insurance, credit cards and art lending—a type of direct lending based on the value of a portfolio of artworks.
“Our approach is designed to do more than offer an arbitrary value of a piece; it’s meant to support price discovery and offer true market-based pricing by allowing fractional owners to go head-to-head with traditional buyers,” Snyder says, adding that the lower total cost has garnered some early attention from institutions and high-net-worth investors that did not find alignment with other art funds.
“This is a market that has a lot of interest, and we’re providing a way to access it,” Snyder says. “From institutions, we’re seeing interest in both the tech stack that runs the auctions and the market itself. We think it’s a long-term opportunity and a market that will continue to develop.”
Read the full article: Are Esoteric Asset Classes the New Hedges?
