As interest in private markets continues to increase, asset managers and private market specialists are banding together to meet demand.
Investors favour expertise in private markets when determining which manager to go with, according to a 2023 Coalition Greenwich study, so starting from scratch in-house may put big managers at a disadvantage. Retail demand is also booming, Coalition Greenwich notes, with larger managers partnering with private market specialists, rather than building new offerings internally, to get into the space ahead of competitors.
In 2025, alternatives specialists were mentioned more than diversified managers in the firm’s Institutional Investors Study; continuing to pull away from generalists after overtaking them in 2022.
“As speed to market with new products remains critical for traditional asset managers, and retail distribution continues to be key for alternatives players, we believe such partnerships will endure, rather than managers trying to go it alone,” stated report author Parijat Banerjee, global co-head of investment management at Coalition Greenwich.
According to the 2024 US Institutional Investors Survey, private market assets make up around a third of portfolios. This is a figure that has been growing steadily since 2017, momentum which the research group believes is set to continue.
In the 2025 edition of the survey, 17% of US asset owners stated that they would be increasing their allocations to private equity by more than 10% in the next three years. A further 15% said the same of private debt, and 12% of private infrastructure equity. At the same time, 5% expected to reduce their private equity allocations by more than 10% – but just 2% expected to do the same for private debt.
©Markets Media Europe 2025
