Watch the video: The risks and benefits of opening up private markets to everyday investors

The Ontario Securities Commission wants to give retail investors access to private markets. But as SCP Fellow Rachel Wasserman, founder of Wasserman Business Law, tells BNN Bloomberg’s Andrew Bell, when you look closely, it starts to look less like democratization and more like offloading risk onto people with the least power to absorb it.

Private equity is already underperforming S&P index funds over 1, 5 and 10-year periods and PE’s biggest historical champions are quietly reducing their exposure. So, why would regulators suddenly be so eager to open the door for retail investors? This proposal to offer retail investors access to PE stands to benefit the asset managers and intermediaries, with everyday investors bearing the costs and risks. Financial inclusion does not mean broadening access to financial products that sophisticated players are already walking away from.

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Speakers

Andrew Bell
BNN Bloomberg

Rachel Wasserman
Founder, Wasserman Business Law
Fellow, Social Capital Partners

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Canada can continue treating its financing monoculture as inevitable, or it can follow the lead of peer jurisdictions and intentionally build the institutional diversity required for a different outcome. The status quo produces predictable, cumulative exclusions that compound over time into lower productivity, narrower entrepreneurship, weaker community resilience and entrenched inequity.

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