One Vehicle for Everything You Own

If you have invested your own money for long enough, it is probably spread across more places than you can name without checking. There is a brokerage account in one country and a private bank in another. There are angel stakes in companies started by people you know, two or three LP interests, a loan you made to a friend's business, and some cash that never found a home.

Some of it has done very well. You may have beaten most of the funds you were pitched over the same years. But if someone asked you for your returns, you would open a spreadsheet you last updated in March, and nobody outside your own head could check a single number in it.

There is a simpler way to hold all of it. You put everything into one vehicle of your own, keep running the portfolio yourself, and let someone else run the fund machinery around you. From that day you have one set of numbers, checked by people who don't work for you.

Why scattered holdings cost you more than you think

The obvious cost is time. Every account sends its own statements in its own format, every private deal has its own lawyer and its own reporting habits, and pulling it all together once a year for your tax adviser takes weeks.

The less obvious cost is that none of it counts. A friend who has watched you invest for ten years asks if they can put money in alongside you, and you have nothing to give them except your word. You think about raising a fund one day, and the first thing any allocator asks for is an audited track record, which you don't have because nobody was ever keeping score independently.

And if something happened to you tomorrow, the people who would have to deal with it would be starting from a pile of logins and a spreadsheet only you understand.

Your own segregated portfolio

Nodal SPC is our Cayman Islands segregated portfolio company, and it is registered with the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority as a mutual fund. Inside it, each segregated portfolio (an SP) has its own assets, its own liabilities and its own investors, and the law keeps each one ring-fenced from every other. We explained how that works in When an SPC Is the Right Tool.

Your SP holds only your investments. Nothing in it is pooled with anyone else, and nobody else's losses can reach it. You hold the units, and the SP holds everything you put in.

The important part is who does what. You run the portfolio, the way you always have: you decide what to buy and sell, and you place the trades. We run the platform around it, so that everything you do is held, valued, audited and reported the way a fund would do it.

How the work is split once the SP is running.

	Who does it
Deciding what to buy, hold and sell	You, within the strategy written into your SP's supplement.
Placing the trades	You.
The platform: the SPC, its board, your supplement and onboarding	Us.
Holding the assets	An independent custodian, in the SP's name.
Striking the NAV	An independent fund administrator, on a fixed schedule.
Signing the accounts	An independent auditor, every year.
Reporting to you	One consolidated report covering every position.

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What can go in

Most of what a private investor owns can be moved into the SP, and it usually goes in as a subscription in kind. That means you transfer the asset itself rather than selling it first, and you receive units in the SP in return.

Listed shares, bonds and cash move the simplest way, by transfer from your current account to the SP's custodian. Shares in private companies can usually move as well, although many shareholder agreements give the other shareholders a right of first refusal or require the board to approve the transfer, so those need checking one by one. An LP interest in someone else's fund will almost always need the general partner's consent. A loan you made can be assigned to the SP, subject to whatever the loan agreement says about assignment. Property normally sits in its own company already, and the SP holds the shares of that company rather than the building itself.

Not everything has to go in on day one. Some people start with their listed portfolio and the two or three private positions that matter most, and add the rest once each consent comes through.

Before you start: a checklist

• You have a full list of what you own, where it is held, and the documents behind each private position.
• You have read the transfer terms in each shareholder agreement, LPA and loan agreement, and you know which ones need consent.
• You have taken tax advice in the country where you live, because moving an asset into a vehicle can be treated as a disposal.
• You can document where the money came from, for every asset going in, because the administrator and custodian will ask.
• You qualify as a professional, qualified or sophisticated investor where you are.
• You have decided how the private positions should be valued, and you are prepared for an independent valuation to come in below the number you have been carrying.
• You know what you want the SP to be in five years: your own book, a vehicle friends can join, or the start of a fund.

How we set it up

The sequence for a new SP on Nodal SPC.

Stage	What happens
1. Intake	We go through what you own, what you want to move first, and how you invest, so the strategy in the supplement describes what you actually do.
2. Onboarding	Identity checks, source of wealth and source of funds, with the administrator and custodian.
3. Supplement	Your SP's own offering supplement is drafted: the strategy, the valuation policy, the dealing terms and the reporting you will receive.
4. Launch	The board of Nodal SPC passes a resolution creating your SP, and its accounts are opened.
5. Contribution	Assets are transferred in kind as each consent arrives, and units are issued to you against each contribution.
6. First NAV	The administrator values the portfolio and your track record begins on that date.

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What the record does for you

From the first NAV, every month or quarter has a number that an independent administrator struck and an independent auditor will check at year end. Good periods and bad ones are recorded the same way, and that is exactly why the record is worth something when you show it to someone.

When the friend asks to invest alongside you, there is something to invest in. The SP can take in other qualified investors on the terms set out in its supplement, and they receive their own units at the NAV on the day they come in. And if you decide to raise a proper fund, you start that conversation with an audited history instead of a story. We wrote about why that history only starts once the position goes in, in Hand Over the Position. Nobody can audit the years before.

It also answers the question about what happens if you are not around. Everything sits in one place, with one administrator who knows every position and one report that anybody you trust can read.

What it won't do

It won't make your investments any better. An SP holding a weak portfolio produces an audited record of a weak portfolio, and that record is harder to ignore than a spreadsheet.

You give up some of the informality. Every trade is recorded and valued by someone independent, and you can't move assets in and out on a whim, because each movement is a subscription or a redemption at NAV.

A private position that is hard to sell stays hard to sell inside the SP. Putting it in a vehicle gives it a value and a report, but not a buyer.

The SP can only do what its supplement allows. If your strategy changes, the supplement has to change with it, and that is a formal step rather than a decision you make over dinner.

And we won't take a portfolio whose real purpose is to hide where the money came from or to carry positions at a number nobody can support. The administrator and the auditor would find it anyway.

If your investments are spread across more places than you can name, send us the list. We'll tell you what can go in first, what needs a consent, and whether your own SP is the right answer or a simpler account would do.