Bundesverband Alternative Investments
Bundesverband Alternative Investments e.V., BAI for short, is the German association for alternative investments across all asset classes and product types. It was founded in Bonn in 1997 and has more than 300 national and international member companies from every field of the professional alternative investments business.
BAI represents these members before lawmakers and supervisors in Berlin and Brussels and works for internationally competitive rules for investing in alternative investments. The association links German professional investors with international providers and supports academic research, and its focus topics are private debt, real assets, ESG and innovation.
Members and asset classes
BAI has more than 300 member companies, and many of them work in more than one field. Asset managers for illiquid alternatives form the largest group with 177 members, followed by 93 managers of liquid alternatives, 46 investment advisors and 33 law, tax and audit firms. Further members are fund administrators, custodians, placement agents, consultants and 20 companies from IT, risk management and fintech.
Among the managers of liquid alternatives is the Swiss issuer of crypto exchange-traded products 21Shares. The definition of alternative investments that BAI uses covers private equity, private debt, infrastructure, real estate, hedge funds, commodities and insurance-linked securities.
BAI Investor Survey
Since 2013 the BAI Investor Survey has asked institutional investors in Germany, Austria and Switzerland how they invest in private markets and alternative strategies. In the 2026 edition, 105 investors with about 2.9 trillion euros in assets took part, most of them pension providers, insurers and family offices from Germany. On average, alternatives made up 32.3 percent of their institutional portfolios.
Infrastructure equity is the most widely held asset class, with 84 percent of the investors invested, ahead of corporate private equity at 82 percent. Cryptocurrencies and tokenized assets appear as an asset class of their own and are held by 3 percent of the investors. Philipp Bunnenberg, head of alternative markets at BAI, wrote the report, in which 72 percent of the investors rated their own teams at expert level.
Alternative Investor Conference in Frankfurt
The Alternative Investor Conference, AIC for short, is the annual conference of BAI and takes place over three days at Kap Europa, the congress center of Messe Frankfurt. Keynotes, panel discussions and updates on asset classes and regulation bring asset managers and institutional investors together.
BAI also holds the Real Assets Symposium and a workshop on sustainable finance and ESG in Frankfurt, as well as a Private Debt Symposium, the BAI InnovationsDay and regular webinars.
Upcoming fintech and finance events in Germany
Board and management
Achim Pütz chairs the honorary board of BAI, with Britta Bene of Mainstay Human Capital Advisors, Peter Brodehser, Matthias Erb of StepStone and Andreas Kalusche of Prime Capital as deputy chairs. Rolf Tilmes, academic director at EBS Executive School in Wiesbaden, is deputy chair and treasurer.
Andreas Binder became managing director on 1 October 2026, after heading the alternative investments department of VHV Gruppe since 2009. Andreas Binder had joined the investor advisory board of BAI in 2011 and was elected to its board in March 2024. Frank Dornseifer shaped BAI for almost 20 years, more than 15 of them as managing director.
Office in Bonn
The office of BAI is at Poppelsdorfer Allee 106 in 53115 Bonn, the city where the association was founded in 1997. From Bonn the team follows legislation in Berlin and Brussels, prepares due diligence questionnaires and fact sheets for members and awards the BAI Science Award with prize money of up to 20,000 euros.
BAI and Finance Loop
Institutional investors who hold private equity, private debt and infrastructure also ask how tokenized funds and digital assets fit into these allocations, which the BAI Investor Survey now records as an asset class of their own. Finance Loop holds events on tokenization and digital assets in Frankfurt and in other European financial centers, where asset managers and investors discuss these questions.
Finance Loop is a professional network and has the goal of driving the institutional use of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, tokenization, stablecoins, and DeFi. Finance Loop helps its members build skills and personal networks in these fields: Investment & Digital Assets, Payments & Digital Money, Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty, and Risk & Compliance.