How Qualified Investors Access Swiss Private-Market Real Estate | OwnMore

Private-market real estate is, by definition, not offered to the public. Whereas a listed property fund can be marketed broadly, a direct equity stake in a development, a small club deal, or a vehicle reserved for qualified investors is a non-public offering. Swiss law treats this deliberately: the Financial Services Act (FinSA) and the Collective Investment Schemes Act (CISA) allow such offerings to reach professional and institutional clients (and high-net-worth retail clients who have opted out), while shielding ordinary retail clients. The restriction is about investor protection, not exclusivity for its own sake.

The consequence for access is structural: classification comes before disclosure. An opportunity’s specific numbers — the asset, the structure, the terms — should not be shared until the recipient’s eligibility is established, because sharing them with someone not entitled to receive the offering would itself be a problem. This is why a serious private-market process always begins with “who are you, in regulatory terms?” rather than with the deal. For a deeper treatment of the classification rules themselves, see the companion explainer on qualified versus professional investors under FinSA.

Eligibility means confirming that the investing party falls into a segment to which a non-public real estate offering may lawfully be made — in Swiss terms, a professional or institutional client, or a high-net-worth individual who has opted out of retail protection. In practice the investing party is often not an individual but a holding company, trust or foundation, so the classification attaches to that specific entity. The investor (or their adviser) provides the basis for the classification, and the financial service provider records it. Classification is provider-specific: a segment assigned by one bank or platform does not automatically transfer to another.

The high-net-worth opting-out route is the most common access path for private individuals. Under FinSA, a retail client can declare in writing that they wish to be treated as a professional client via one of two statutory routes: knowledge plus financial assets of at least CHF 500,000, or financial assets of at least CHF 2 million with no separate knowledge test. Opting out widens access but reduces protective disclosures — a deliberate trade that should be made with documentation and, where appropriate, independent advice. Being classified as eligible does not mean a particular investment is recommended or suitable; it means an offering may lawfully reach you.

Once the segment is established, onboarding completes the gate. Under the Anti-Money-Laundering Act (GwG), the investing entity is identified, beneficial owners are determined, and the source of funds is established. For a holding company, trust or foundation this can involve verifying the structure, the controlling persons and the provenance of the capital. None of this is a formality to be cleaned up later: an opportunity that is reserved or signed before onboarding is complete sits on an unstable footing, because the participation may not have been permissible at the time it was taken.

Doing this on infrastructure rather than by email has a concrete benefit: the eligibility decision and the onboarding evidence are recorded against the investor and the specific offering, in order, before any binding stage unlocks. That recorded order — classified first, onboarded, then admitted to the opportunity — is exactly what an auditor or regulator later asks to see, and it is far easier to demonstrate from a structured rail than to reassemble from an inbox.

With the gate cleared, the eligible investor enters the permissioned process. A specific opportunity is presented in a structured, comparable form inside a digital dealroom, where documents are versioned, watermarked and access-logged. If the investor decides to proceed — in their own name — they reserve an allocation, then sign the subscription, shareholder or participation documents, with a clear record of which version was signed, by whom and when. Funds then settle against the executed documents, and the resulting position is held through a FINMA-supervised Swiss custodian — as that integration goes live — and reconciled.

Two points are worth underlining for anyone picturing the access path. First, signing is not the finish line — ownership is only secured once funds have settled and the holding is custodied and reconciled; treating the signature as the end is a common and costly error. Second, the investor remains self-directed throughout: at no stage does a manager decide on their behalf. They are using a rail, not delegating a decision. The capital structure they are committing into — senior debt, mezzanine, preferred or common equity — is a separate matter of judgement; the companion explainer on the real-estate capital stack sets out those layers.

OwnMore is the self-directed infrastructure that runs this access path end to end on one regulated surface: eligibility, onboarding, presentation, dealroom, reservation, signing, settlement, custody and reporting, with every material action sealed into an append-only SHA-256 audit chain. Its contribution is operational — it makes the eligibility-first path structurally enforced (binding stages do not unlock before classification and onboarding are recorded) and the whole sequence reconstructable later. It does not source deals on an investor’s behalf, recommend investments or promise outcomes.

To place the entity precisely: OwnMore is Swiss private-market investment infrastructure, operated by BloomDigital GmbH in Switzerland — a financial-infrastructure company, not a fund, brokerage, listings marketplace or discretionary manager, and with no connection to any nutrition, wellness, supplement or multi-level-marketing brand of similar name. And, as throughout: this is general educational information about how access works, not investment, legal or tax advice. Thresholds and categories are set by Swiss law (FinSA, CISA, GwG) and supervised by FINMA; for your own situation, consult qualified Swiss advisers and the primary legal sources.