For years, the private markets conversation centred on access.
Could wealth clients gain exposure to private equity, private credit or infrastructure? Could advisers navigate the complexity?
Could regulators create workable frameworks? Could product providers lower minimums and package traditionally institutional strategies for a broader audience?
Those questions are still important, but the discussion has become more operational recently. Across wealth management, private banking, and distribution platforms, firms are now spending as much time discussing implementation and servicing as they are product access itself.
As markets mature, attention naturally turns towards infrastructure, operational resilience and user experience. Private markets are beginning to follow a similar path.
Our numbers help explain why. Allfunds Alternative Solutions grew to €37.9 billion in assets under administration by the end of the first quarter, up 61 per cent year-on-year (YoY) and 12.1 per cent since the end of 2025, driven largely by rising demand from wealth channels.
The platform today connects roughly 400 distributors, 233 alternative asset managers and around 3,000 alternative funds. At this scale, operational complexity becomes harder to separate from commercial growth. Private markets are gradually moving into broader wealth adoption and firms are having to think more carefully about how these products are delivered and serviced.
Wealth adoption is becoming more systematic
Private markets adoption within wealth management has developed gradually. Initially, exposure was largely opportunistic. Products were often offered on request to high-net-worth clients comfortable with illiquidity, longer investment horizons, and additional administrative requirements.
Private markets are increasingly moving from execution-only access towards advisory-led implementation and then into discretionary portfolio management structures. Over time, alternatives are becoming less of a specialist allocation and more of a recurring component within broader portfolio construction.
Once private markets begin appearing systematically inside model portfolios or discretionary mandates, onboarding, suitability checks, liquidity management, reporting cadence and lifecycle events all become part of day-to-day operational delivery.
Many firms are discovering that maintaining a consistent client experience across multiple jurisdictions, wrappers and servicing models is often more difficult than expanding distribution itself. Scalability has therefore become a much bigger part of the industry conversation.
Distribution and servicing are becoming part of the same conversation
For much of the past decade, wealth represented a large and relatively underpenetrated pool of capital, while regulatory developments have created new pathways into semiliquid and evergreen structures. As adoption broadens, however, the distribution realities become much more visible.
Private markets have historically operated within an institutional framework built around smaller investor groups, direct relationships and highly bespoke servicing models. Wealth distribution changes those dynamics. Alternative asset managers suddenly face larger client populations, multiple intermediaries, different wrappers, varying reporting expectations and a broader range of servicing interactions.
Conversations with asset managers increasingly focus on both distribution and operational readiness for wealth distribution. In Europe, developments such as ELTIF 2.0 have accelerated the importance of these conversations to access retail and advisory channels at scale.
Europe remains highly fragmented
One of the reasons this challenge is so pronounced is because private markets distribution still varies sharply between regions.
There is often a tendency to talk about Europe as though it were a single private markets market. In reality, structures, allocation behaviours, investor familiarity and distribution models remain highly localised.
Allfunds platform data illustrates these regional differences clearly. Across the firm’s distribution network, private markets allocations within wealth remain relatively modest in Iberia and France, often around 1-2 per cent, with adviser-led distribution playing a significant role. Switzerland operates at a much higher level, with allocations closer to 5-6 per cent and stronger participation from private banks. In parts of the Middle East, allocations can reach 10-12 per cent, reflecting more established private banking demand and greater familiarity with alternative assets.
The UK presents a slightly different picture again. Wealth managers have historically preferred listed structures such as investment trusts when accessing less liquid strategies. Long-term asset funds may alter that balance over time, although adoption remains at a relatively early stage.
Continental Europe has moved more quickly in some areas through ELTIF adoption, although that acceleration brings its own operational demands.
Insurance-linked distribution is becoming more relevant in several markets too, particularly through unit-linked structures. Retail banks and digital wealth platforms are beginning to widen their alternatives offering, adding another layer of complexity to an already fragmented landscape.
For global asset managers, this creates a difficult balancing act. A structure that works efficiently in one market may be far less suitable in another. Reporting expectations, distribution economics and investor behaviour all differ between markets.
Evergreen structures are reshaping expectations
One of the clearest structural trends within private markets today is the rise of semiliquid and evergreen solutions.
Historically, illiquid closed-ended structures dominated the market. They suited institutional investors with long investment horizons and relatively predictable capital commitments.
Wealth investors tend to approach liquidity differently. Many are increasingly comfortable accepting reduced liquidity in exchange for diversification and return potential, although they still expect greater accessibility, visibility and servicing responsiveness than institutional markets traditionally provided.
Semiliquid structures are becoming more common because they align more naturally with wealth distribution channels and adviserled portfolio construction.
Private markets are gradually inheriting some of the servicing expectations associated with traditional investment products. Investors increasingly expect clearer reporting, smoother onboarding and more consistent communication regardless of the underlying liquidity profile.
Regulation and wrappers are becoming operational tools
The evolution of fund structures provides another useful lens into how the market is developing.
ELTIF 2.0 has become one of the most closely watched developments within European private markets distribution. The framework was designed to improve flexibility and broaden access to long-term private assets within wealth channels.
Across new launches on the Allfunds platform, ELTIFs represent a substantial share of activity, alongside continued use of UCI Part II vehicles, RAIFs, Cayman structures and local market wrappers such as French FCPRs or Spanish FILs.
The diversity of structures is revealing in itself. No single wrapper works perfectly across every market or investor type. Managers continue selecting structures based on jurisdiction, target client base, distribution channel, liquidity profile and operational considerations.
Increasingly, the wrapper itself becomes part of the servicing model.
Each structure introduces its own requirements around liquidity management, reporting cadence, client communication and operational oversight.
This is also where open architecture becomes increasingly important. Private markets distribution is unlikely to become fully standardised given the fragmentation across structures, jurisdictions and investor behaviours.
Platforms capable of operating across multiple wrappers, jurisdictions and asset types therefore occupy an increasingly important position within the market structure itself.
Product demand continues to broaden
Overall, Private Equity and Private Credit remain the core areas of demand within wealth channels, supported by a growing offering of evergreen funds from alternative and traditional asset managers entering this segment of the market.
However, demand and supply of alternatives is broadening as specific strategies such as venture capital, secondaries or infrastructure start to gain traction with wealth clients.
Education still plays a central role
Despite the growth trajectory, private markets adoption still depends heavily on education and adviser confidence.
Alternative assets require different conversations around liquidity, investment horizons, valuation frequency and portfolio suitability. Many advisers continue building familiarity with these structures, particularly outside traditional private banking environments.
This is one reason educational initiatives have become increasingly prominent across the industry.
Events, content programmes and adviser engagement efforts are helping firms build a more informed distribution ecosystem around private markets.
The market still has considerable room for expansion. Across the Allfunds distribution network, overall private markets allocation currently sits around two per cent, while distributors typically hold around 7 private markets funds compared with 15-20 liquid alternative funds on average.
Those figures suggest that adoption remains relatively early, even as momentum continues to build.
Private markets are moving towards integration
Perhaps the most important development underway is the gradual integration of private markets into broader portfolio construction.
For many years, alternatives sat alongside traditional portfolios as specialist allocations.
Exposure was often thematic or opportunistic. Increasingly, private markets are beginning to move closer to becoming standard portfolio building blocks within wealth management.
Different markets are progressing at different speeds, although the direction of travel is becoming more consistent across regions.
Public and private assets are likely to remain operationally distinct for a long time yet. From a portfolio construction perspective, however, the boundaries are beginning to soften.
As that happens, attention is increasingly turning towards firms capable of supporting private markets with reliable servicing and scalable distribution infrastructure across multiple channels.
The private markets story is evolving well beyond access alone. The next phase will depend heavily on how effectively the industry can support broader adoption while still accommodating the fragmentation, local nuances and differing investor expectations that continue to shape the market today.
← Previous interview
AutoRek
Jack Niven
Next interview →
Apex Group
Sean Tinney
.jpg)
Image: Allfunds 
