New alternative investment firm lands in Sydney

A pair of Remara directors, along with an iPartners private credit specialist, have joined forces to launch a new alternative investment firm, targeting an underserved segment across the private credit market.

Timothy Wilson, Blake Velkovski and Haim Deitz have co-founded Civitas Capital Management. The firm, based in Sydney, focuses on garnering success from the lower mid-market sector, Civitas told Financial Standard.

"We operate in the very underserved lower mid-market where the deals are maybe too small for the larger, institutional names, but at the same time, a little too complex for smaller scaled investors," Velkovski said.

"We spearhead in the sector where there's not much competition... but lies extremely good credit opportunities that we can structure with collateral coverage and a great return premium for solving those complex issues for borrowers."

Although the firm is only serving high-net-worth (HNW) clients and family offices currently, Wilson said it is keen to expand its collaboration with financial advisers on the longer-term.

"I'm very aware that advisers typically need a fund to be on the approved product list (APL)... We are currently in the process of onboarding with a couple of the platforms. We're already available on non-custodial with HUB24, and we're having discussions with Netwealth, Mason Stevens, Praemium, CFS Edge, etcetera," Wilson said.

"We are certainly trying to make ourselves available for advisers... we just know the APLs and the process they have to go through."

Meanwhile, Velkovski added the cumulative background between the three of them is critical to delivering success from niche parts of the private credit sector.

"We've seen a lot of different segments of the market, how different underwriting standards were done, and where people aren't lending and where the opportunity set currently lies," Velkovski continued.

"I'd say that we've really focused on this segment... we're the only guys in the market that really apply our framework into this subsect of the market, and by doing so, we're the price makers in this side of the market.

"We're solving people's problems where there's no other contributors around, so we can ask for above market credit protections, above market pricing relative to the risk, above market collateral coverage.

"Given our diverse experience, we operate across all sectors, so the fund is completely secular agnostic. We've lent into natural resources, healthcare, environmental markets, real estate."

Deitz also added the firm is not intending to "reinvent" the wheel of private credit, rather, merely capitalising on a segment that presents a huge potential.

"We found a segment of the market that's underserviced, where we can construct real outsize returns," Deitz said.

"We just wanted to carve that strategy out and service these borrowers and provide a platform for investors to access very high risk-adjusted returns."

Civitas operates as a corporate authorised representative of Bolt Capital's Australian financial services licence.