Created to help expand the financial professional's toolbox, our free courses are meant for a range of professionals.
For CE credit courses you need to log in or register with Franklin Templeton which should only take a couple of minutes.
Alts Education
Hello Alternatives
Our alternatives learning platform offers you a comprehensive curriculum guaranteed to expand your expertise across the alternative investments landscape. Built to meet you where you are, your learning experience can take many forms from live webinars to online learning at your own pace.
Courses for all Financial Professionals
Multiple Modes of Learning
The CE1 (continuing education) credit courses are available as an eLearning module or as a live webinar. Supplementary materials are also available as webinars.
World Leading Educators
Courses written and delivered by Alternatives industry experts.
CE Credit Courses
You can choose whether to do an accredited course as an eLearning module or join a live webinar at a time that suits you. Courses and webinars are around 50 minutes in length and are free but you will need to sign in or register to access the content.
Why Alternatives?
This module will explore the value and versatility of alternative investments, and examine how they can help in achieving client goals and objectives, including enhanced returns, increased income, diversification and inflation hedging.
Private Equity
Explore the opportunities with private equity, evaluate its stages (venture capital, growth equity and buyout) and examine why the current market environment requires a different playbook.
Real Estate
Explore the merits of allocating to both public and private real estate, and the role they can play in a client portfolio, including generating returns, increased income, diversification and inflation hedging.
Private Credit
Examine the merits of private credit and how they compare to public market equivalents. Distinguish between the different types of private credit options (direct lending, mezzanine, and distressed), and the related return, risk and income characteristics.
Infrastructure
Explore the unique characteristics of infrastructure and examine how they can be used in a portfolio, including enhancing returns, diversification, and hedging the impact of inflation. We will examine the differences between listed and private infrastructure opportunities.
Hedge Strategies
Learn about the diversity of hedge fund strategies, and the role they may play with clients, from generating returns, providing income, dampening volatility, and making money in rising and falling markets.
White Papers
Here are our latest white papers on a variety of alternatives topics.
Cheat Sheets
Quick reference guides summarizing key learnings on Alternatives.
Private equity represents a diverse group of investment types that correlate to specific stages of business development. This guide provides a quick reference on these concepts.
A summary of the Real Estate investment universe and a look at the four main types of commercial real estate.
This guide aims to help financial professionals answer these questions: What is private credit? Why consider private credit? And how to access private credit.
Myth Busters
Common misconceptions and myths around alternatives investing.
1 - Alternative Investments are only for Institutions and Family Offices.
This used to be the case - but with product innovation, and a willingness of institutional-caliber managers to bring accredited investor products to the market – these once elusive investments are now available to a broader group of investors at lower minimums and more flexible features.
2 - It is cumbersome to open and fund an alternative investment account.
While it is still more complex than dropping a ticket, the process for opening and funding an alternative investment account has been streamlined and automated, by firms like iCapital and CAIS. These FinTech firms have seized the opportunity to improve the client experience.
3 - I can use public market equivalents to achieve the same results as private markets.
While public market equivalents (PMEs), may have certain common traits as private markets, they generally exhibit dramatically different results than the PME. Private equity and private credit have historically delivered an illiquidity premium relative to their traditional counterparts2; private real estate represents a diverse set of opportunities, and has historically delivered differentiated returns, risk, and income characteristics relative to public REITs3; private and listed infrastructure represent different opportunity sets; and natural resources are different than commodities and equity-oriented surrogates (gold miners, manufacturers, food processing companies, etc.).
4 - All hedge funds are created equally and are absolute return strategies.
Hedge funds represent a diverse set of strategies from equity-hedged, event-driven, relative value, macro, and multi-strategy. Equity-hedged is designed to provide hedged exposure to the markets, and is a growth surrogate; event-driven seeks to take advantage of changes in the capital structure (M&A, Convertible Arb., etc.); relative value is designed to take advantage of mispriced securities; macro is a defensive / non-correlating strategy; and multi-strategy allocates across the first four in an opportunistic fashion.
5 - Investors need access to liquid investments.
While investors typically need some liquidity, they don’t always need their entire portfolio liquid. In fact, research has shown that there can often be an illiquidity premium4 – the excess return for locking up illiquid assets (private equity and private credit) for an extended period of time. This allows a PE manager ample time to execute their strategy and harvest returns. It may also instill a level of discipline in holding onto investments during volatile periods.