These Benzinga Global Fintech Award Finalists Are The Future Of Alternative Investment Platforms

The Benzinga Global Fintech Awards are a yearly showcase of the greatest advances in fintech from leaders and visionaries in the worlds of finance and technology. This year, we have executives, developers and innovators from the likes of Facebook, Amazon, IBM, JP Morgan, Zelle, TD Ameritrade, TradeStation, Fidelity and so many more attending the Oscars of Fintech.

The BZ Awards are half party, half business development bonanza—they’re a rare chance to meet and network with everyone in finance from CNBC’s Josh Brown to the head of financial services at Facebook to the heads of trading at every major brokerage.

To offer more clarity on who is competing for the prize of most innovative in each category, Benzinga is breaking out the finalists in each category and offering more information about what they do.

The finalists for the Best Alternative Investments Platform category are:

Yieldstreet
CEO: Milind Mehere
Description: Yieldstreet is changing the way wealth is created.

PeerStreet
CEO: Brew Johnson
Description: PeerStreet is leveling the playing field between Wall Street and Main Street.

EquityZen
CEO: Atish Davda
Description: EquityZen is a marketplace for company approved secondary transactions. It helps accredited investors access private shares while providing liquidity to long time shareholders of those companies.

Livestock Wealth
CEO: Ntuthuko Shezi
Description: Livestock Wealth is a crowdfarming company that enables anyone to invest in a farm.

CAIS Group
CEO: Mattew C. Brown
Description: CAIS is the premier gateway to the multi-trillion dollar independent wealth channel for specialized investment products, delivering a superior experience to wealth managers and product providers alike.

Mercury Capital Advisors
CEO: Michael G. Ricciardi
Description: Mercury Capital Advisors is a mobile-responsive fintech platform of curated institutional-quality offerings is intuitive and simple to navigate. It's the only digital platform operated by a leading global capital intermediary having relationships with over 2,500 of the largest, most sophisticated institutions in the world including sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, insurance companies, and endowments.

Fundrise
CEO: Ben Miller
Description: Fundrise is a two-time Forbes FinTech 50 award winning investment platform offering everyone in the U.S., regardless of net worth, access to invest in real estate investments.

Swaper
CEO: Peteris Kisis
Description: Swaper is a loan marketplace offering an easy investing in pre-funded consumer loans originated by its parent company Wandoo Finance Group in Poland, Georgia, Spain, Denmark and Russia.

RealtyMogul
CEO: Jilliene Helman
Description: RealtyMogul is a pioneer in providing private real estate to discerning investors.

Fundbase
CEO: Anthony Capone
Description: Fundbase is a Switzerland-based company that is disrupting and democratizing the process of finding, analyzing and investing in hedge funds around the globe.

Rally Rd.
CEO: Christopher Bruno
Description: Rally Rd. is a fully functional alternative asset equity marketplace, from IPO to secondary trading.

GROUNDFLOOR
CEO: Brian Dally
Description: GROUNDFLOOR is the first issuer qualified by the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission to offer real estate based payment dependent notes that are available to non-accredited investors.

Republic
CEO: Kendrick Nguyen
Description: Republic is an equity crowdfunding platform that democratizes angel investing for investors and for founders. Any entrepreneur, not just those who get easily access VCs can get funded.