Accredited Investor
Also called: accreditation, sophisticated investor, qualified investor
An accredited investor meets income or net worth thresholds — in the US, $200,000 of income or $1m of net worth excluding a home — and can therefore buy unregistered private offerings. The premise is that wealth proxies for the ability to bear loss and to demand information. The criticism is that it gates the highest-returning asset classes by wealth rather than by knowledge, which recent rule changes have only partly addressed.