UBS Wealth Management and alternative investments

UBS Unified Global Alternatives offers an extensive global platform. Your UBS Financial Advisor and our team can help inform your thinking by recommending strategies that may be appropriate for your overall wealth plan.

What is an alternative investment?

An alternative investment is any asset or investment strategy that falls outside of the traditional investment categories of stocks, bonds and cash. Alternative investments can include real estate, private equity, hedge funds, commodities and more. They’re also used to diversify an investment portfolio, as they may not directly be linked to the traditional stock and bond markets. Learn about nontraditional investments.

Potential benefits of alternative investments

Alternative investments may have the potential for higher returns, but they also carry higher risks, including increased volatility. For this reason, it’s important to work with an experienced Financial Advisor when exploring adding alternatives to your portfolio.

Complementing your existing portfolio with alternatives may benefit your long-term wealth strategy. Consider the points below.

Historical outperformance versus traditional asset classes

Alternative investment performance is not typically consistent with that of the public markets.

Manage volatile market cycles

Alternatives may help your portfolio weather volatile market cycles and downturns.

Access to nontraditional strategies

May provide investors with exposure to strategies that are typically only available to large institutions and endowments.

Portfolio diversification

Diversifying beyond traditional stocks and bonds may provide increased flexibility in pursuing upside potential, while managing downside risk.

Please note that interests of alternative investment funds (Funds) are sold only to qualified investors, and only by means of offering documents that include information about the risks, performance and expenses of the Funds, among other things. An investment in alternative investment funds is speculative and involves significant risks.

A wide range of alternative investment solutions

UBS offers multiple alternative investment strategies. Depending on your goals, risk appetite and time horizon, your Financial Advisor can help you understand how each alternative asset class works. Our platform includes the following.

Hedge funds are pooled investment funds that use a wide range of strategies to seek returns. They offer the potential for high returns and portfolio diversification, but they also carry higher risks.

  • Actively managed portfolios, covering numerous strategies, market exposures and risk/return profiles
  • Key strategies include equity long/short, event driven, global macro and relative value

Private credit is typically loans or debt investments including direct lending or private debt funds. They offer the potential for high returns, portfolio diversification and access to non-publicly traded loans, but they also carry higher risks.

  • Investments in debt that is illiquid and not readily tradable on a public exchange
  • Key strategies include direct lending, distressed and special situations, structured credit and real estate credit

Private equity typically involves investing in privately held companies or acquiring public companies. They offer the potential for high returns and provide access to early-stage or growing companies, but they also carry higher risks.

  • Actively managed pools of capital that invest in public and private companies
  • Key strategies include venture, growth equity, mezzanine, special situations and buyouts

Our real estate investments include commercial and residential opportunities. They offer the potential for passive income and capital appreciation but they also carry higher risks.

  • Pools of actively managed capital that invest in commercial and residential properties
  • Key strategies include core, core plus, value-added and opportunistic

Infrastructure assets are nontraditional assets within the infrastructure sector that go beyond the usual roads, bridges and utilities, often focusing on emerging needs and technologies.

  • Actively managed pools of capital that invest in infrastructure assets globally
  • Key strategies include core, core-plus, value-add and opportunistic
Guided by our robust investment process, our team sources alternative investment opportunities in the US and abroad to help ensure a quality offering for our clients.
Jerry Pascucci, Co-Head of Unified Global Alternatives
Headshot of Jerry Pascucci
 

What sets alternative investments at UBS apart?

The UBS Unified Global Alternatives team has the experience, expertise and access to opportunities that can align strategically with your long-term needs and goals.

  • Choice

    Through relationships with 500 investment managers globally1, we offer a wide variety of product opportunities across diverse risk, return and liquidity profiles. UBS also offers advice and planning, giving you support and helping you create a robust portfolio.

  • Access to alternative investments

    With manager partnerships around the world, our global due diligence team of 34 investment professionals is uniquely positioned to source niche opportunities worldwide.

  • Addressing your needs

    Our investment selection process provides you with the most relevant solutions. We start by identifying specific investment themes and then aligning those with appropriate managers.

  • Dedicated to our craft

    With 30 years of experience and over 500 employees2, UBS has delivered alternative investments to clients, managing $286 billion in invested assets3, across multiple strategies.

1Includes managers with whom we have collaborated directly, i.e., it does not consider the collaborations of fund of funds.
2Included only professionals fully dedicated to future UGA unit. As of Dec. 31, 2024.
3Includes invested assets across Asset Management and Global Wealth Management. As of December 2024. Invested assets include net new money/net new fee-generating assets and custody/execution assets.

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Alternative investment strategies are investment vehicles that are formed by professional money managers to afford them greater flexibility to manage money in any market environment. These strategies typically have flexibility regarding the types of securities in which they can invest (e.g., options and futures contracts), the types of positions they can take (e.g., long and short positions) and the amount of leverage they are permitted to employ. A professional money manager can use these and other techniques to modify market exposure and create portfolio characteristics that may be desirable for certain clients (e.g., reduced correlation to financial markets, potential lower volatility, and better performance in “down” markets). This flexibility can add value when used skillfully. This flexibility does, however, add additional elements of risk and complexity, including that alternative investments are often long-term, illiquid investments that are not easily valued. Note that due to the nature of alternative investments, the risk and return assumptions used in this analysis may tend to overstate potential benefits but not fully reflect potential risks with respect to those investments.

Expiration:1/30/2026
Review Code: 4191437