Valla
Join “the club.”
There is a table where the largest families invest. Who The Invictus Collective is, why we built Valla on it, and how it puts that table within your reach.
How it fits together
Two names. One table.
When you become a Valla client, the advisory firm on your paperwork is The Invictus Collective… a Chicago-based registered investment adviser with clients and relationships across the country. Valla is the name on the door, the people you meet, the plan and the fee. Invictus is the institution behind the door: the registration, the compliance officer, the investment desk, the technology, the custodial relationships at Schwab and Fidelity.
We could have built all of that from scratch. We chose not to, for a simple reason: Invictus already had the one thing a new firm can’t buy — a decade of running money for families who could have hired anyone.
Valla — the people
- Your advisor, named on your plan
- The Valla Way: listen, date, build, keep
- The Haven buckets and your one-page plan
- The fee, and the promise not to sell
Invictus — the institution
- SEC registration and chief compliance officer
- Chief investment officer and structuring desk
- Technology built in-house custom for you
- Custody at Schwab and Fidelity; trading; billing
One table
Who Invictus is
Built for a few families. Now open to yours.
Invictus began the way most private-wealth firms only claim to: as a family office. Its founding advisors left a major Wall Street private bank in 2020 and brought their families with them… the ones who could have gone anywhere. The people who run it didn’t come up through retail brokerage. They came from the institutional side of the business… family offices, a $20-billion institutional platform, and a trading firm the chief investment officer built and ran himself…and they brought that way of working to a small number of households. Chicago-based, with a footprint across the country.
families served since 2020 — not sixteen hundred
Invictusthe scale of the institutional world the investment team came from
Invictus, CIO backgroundthe chief investment officer built and ran a trading firm before Invictus; CFA, CAIA
Invictustechnology, built by the firm’s own CTO — not licensed from a vendor
InvictusThat is the pedigree that matters to us. Not the size of the firm — where its people learned the craft, the size of the clients it was built for, and the fact that they stayed.
Figures provided by Invictus and approximate; see important information below.
The part nobody explains
There is a club.
Families with real money don’t invest the way the rest of us are told to. They aren’t handed a stock-and-bond slider and told to hope. They have people who build the investment to fit the goal — structures that can be designed to pay in a flat market, a falling one, or a rising one; private opportunities that never reach a brokerage screen; hedges that most advisors have never traded.
You can see the club in the numbers. The world’s largest family offices keep roughly 40 to 45 percent of their portfolios outside ordinary stocks and bonds — in private investments, hedged strategies, real assets and structured exposures. The typical household working with an advisor holds somewhere between nothing and about three percent, and more than half of advisors allocate none at all. That gap isn’t a difference of opinion. It’s a difference of access.
Share of the portfolio outside ordinary stocks and bonds
The largest family offices
The typical advised household
Most advisors can’t offer any of that. Not because they’re hiding it — because their firm doesn’t have the desk, the credentials or the relationships to do it. So it stays with the sixteen families, and everyone else gets the slider.
Valla clients sit at the same table.
Same desk.
Same CIO.
Same tools.
What that means for you
Four things you get that most households don’t.
- 01
A chief investment officer, not a call center.
Every Haven bucket is designed and overseen by a CIO who came up on the institutional side — a family office, a $20-billion platform, a trading firm of his own — and now builds structures for a handful of demanding families. When your bucket rolls, he is the one who signed off on the terms.
- 02
Investments built to fit the goal, not the other way around.
The Haven models themselves are the first example: seven product structures, each with a defined job and a tradeoff written in advance. Where a goal needs something more specific, the same desk that structures for institutions can build it — and explain it in one page.
- 03
A first look at what institutions see.
Invictus structures and places market-linked investments for other firms. When one fits a Valla client’s plan — a defined outcome on a date that matters — you see it, with the terms, the risks and the alternatives, before you decide.
- 04
The club’s allocation, sized to your plan — not sold to you.
The families in the club don’t hold 40 percent in alternatives because it’s fashionable; they hold it because someone built each piece to a purpose. Valla does the same in reverse: we start from your one-page plan and your Floor, and only then decide whether a hedged, private or structured piece belongs — and how much. For most households the answer is “some, carefully.” For some it’s none. Either answer is a good one.
- 05
Technology built by the people who use it.
Your dashboard, your roll notices, your quarterly retrospective run on a platform Invictus’s own CTO built for exactly this. Nothing off the shelf, nothing licensed from a vendor that answers to someone else.
What the club is
Access.
The same desk, CIO and tools the founding families have…available when they fit your plan.
Structures built to a date and a goal, explained in one page, with the risks in the same size type.
Investments you would otherwise never be shown, seen before you decide, not after.
An allocation that looks more like a family office’s than a brokerage account’s — when, and only when, your plan calls for it.
“The club is worth joining only if someone inside it is on your side. ”
What it isn’t
A guarantee.
Not a promise of returns.
Nothing here changes the fact that investing involves risk, including loss of principal. A 40-percent allocation is what the largest families choose; it is not a target, a recommendation or a forecast for you.
Not for everyone, and not for every goal.
Private investments require eligibility under SEC rules and can be illiquid for years. Most Valla clients’ plans are met entirely by the Haven buckets, and that’s fine.
Not free of conflict — and we say so.
Invictus is paid for structuring and placing some of these investments. If one is ever recommended to you, that compensation, the conflict and the alternatives will be in writing before you decide, and the compliance officer will have reviewed it. Valla earns nothing extra for it.
Not a bank deposit.
A market-linked note is a promise from the issuing bank. If the bank fails, the promise does. We size and diversify accordingly, and we tell you which bank.
Questions Anne asked
Fair questions. Straight answers.
So who am I actually a client of?+
Both, in different ways. Your advisory agreement is with The Invictus Collective, the registered adviser. Valla is the trade name, the team and the process you chose. Your Form ADV explains it in full, and you get it before you sign.
Does this mean I’m going to be sold complicated products?+
No. Most Valla plans are met entirely by the seven Haven models. Anything beyond that is offered only when it fits a specific goal on your plan, and only with the risks, the costs and the alternatives written down first.
If the wealthy hold 40 percent in alternatives, should I?+
Not necessarily. They hold it because each piece was built for a purpose and they can afford to have money locked up for years. We start from your plan, not their percentage. If a hedged or private piece protects something on your one page, we’ll show you how much and why. If it doesn’t, you won’t see it.
Doesn’t Invictus make money on those investments? Isn’t that a conflict?+
Yes, and yes. That’s why it’s disclosed in writing every time, reviewed by the compliance officer, and why Valla itself earns nothing extra for recommending them. You should ask any firm the same question.
Do I have to be ‘ultra-high-net-worth’ to be at this table?+
No. The desk, the CIO and the tools serve every Valla client. Some specific private investments have eligibility rules set by the SEC; if you don’t meet them, you simply won’t be shown those, and your plan won’t need them.
What if something happens to Invictus?+
Your money is held at Schwab or Fidelity in your name, not at Invictus. Your relationship is with the people named on your plan, and your agreement gives you the right to leave, with your accounts, at any time.
Why should I care about any of this?+
Because the alternative is the slider. The club exists; the only question is whether the person across the table from you can get you in…and whether they’re on your side once you are.
Valla
Same table. Your side of it.
The people you meet are Valla. The institution behind them is Invictus. Together, the desk and the tools built for a few families — with someone at the table who answers only to you.
vallawealth.com