There is no question private markets have exploded. What was once a niche asset class for institutions and the ultra-wealthy has become a core part of modern wealth management. Global private markets assets have now passed $16 trillion and continue to grow. Venture capital, private equity, private credit and real assets are becoming essential components of diversified portfolios for families and advisors.
Yet the infrastructure that supports these investments still looks like the early days of public markets. It mirrors the 1970s, when equities were traded through phone orders and paper certificates before electronic systems transformed speed, transparency and access. Private markets are now at a similar inflection point. Companies stay private longer, value creation happens before IPO and client demand is rising. But the systems advisors rely on have not kept up.
The Infrastructure Gap
In recent years, the industry has focused on expanding access. Lower minimums, feeder structures and new distribution paths have opened the door for a broader investor base. But solving access only exposed a deeper issue. The core infrastructure that manages private investments remains fragmented and dated.
There is no unified place to manage the full lifecycle of a private investment. Advisors jump between portals for fund access, spreadsheets for allocations, PDFs for reporting, email threads for subscriptions and CRM notes for client conversations. Public markets have long operated on integrated systems. Private markets are still operating on disconnected tools.
The Dilemma
When a new fund or co-investment comes across an advisor’s desk, the job should be simple. Understand the opportunity, evaluate the merits, identify the fit with the client base and communicate it in a personalized way. But the lack of infrastructure turns this into a major bottleneck.
Advisors struggle to answer essential questions.
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Which clients does the opportunity fit for?
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Why is this investment a better opportunity than similar ones?
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Which opportunities to prioritize and why?
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How to personalize the rationale at a client-by-client level?
Most of this information exists, but it is scattered. It lives in subscription documents, quarterly reports, CRM notes, ad hoc spreadsheets and email correspondence. Without a central data layer, advisors rely on memory and intuition rather than systematic insight.
A Data-Poor Environment
The core issue is a data-poor environment created by unstructured information. Advisors do not have a dynamic and clear way of quickly assessing exposure, risk, liquidity profile or vintage year concentration across each client. They cannot easily see expected capital calls or distributions. They cannot quickly connect client objectives to actual holdings.
This gap leads to a lack of personalized client service and missed opportunities. A strong fund might fit five clients perfectly, but without infrastructure to surface that matches, the advisor defaults to broad communication or shares it only with whoever comes to mind first.
The Business Cost
These limitations place a real ceiling on how large a private markets practice can grow. Advisors who should be able to serve 100 clients with private allocations can realistically handle 20 or 30. Surveys consistently show that a single advisor may spend more than 20 hours per month on private markets-related manual work. Firms also cite document management, reporting and compliance as major sources of drag.
Client expectations have also shifted. They expect the same clarity, transparency and real-time understanding in private markets that they receive in public markets. When advisors cannot articulate exposures, expected cash flows or portfolio fit, it weakens trust and pushes clients toward advisors with better infrastructure.
What Modern Infrastructure Should Deliver
A modern infrastructure for private markets must deliver three capabilities.
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Centralized data: Advisors need a single view of client portfolios across public and private holdings with clear insight into risk, liquidity, performance and diversification.
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Intelligent matching: Opportunities should automatically map to relevant clients based on real portfolio data, not intuition. Interests, capacity, liquidity windows and risk preferences should all guide the match.
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Streamlined workflows: Subscription documents should auto-fill, capital calls should be executed through integrated banking, reporting should be standardized and data should flow directly into client conversations.
The Coming AI Acceleration
Artificial intelligence will accelerate this shift. As private market data becomes structured and centralized, AI will play the same role it already does in public markets: turning information into advice. Several capabilities are emerging:
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Automated review of offering materials with instant summaries
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Client-specific suitability analysis tied to risk, liquidity and goals
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Forward-looking portfolio diagnostics, including cash flow modeling and concentration analysis
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Automated subscription document completion
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Real-time monitoring that flags fund performance changes, company events or emerging liquidity concerns
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Real-time fund evaluations based on parsing thousands of data points
These capabilities reduce manual work and increase precision. They improve compliance, strengthen personalization and allow advisors to scale private markets across their entire book. Given that only 26% of RIAs programmatically participate in private markets today, but adoption is expected to reach 50% to 60% by 2030, the gap between firms with modern infrastructure and those without will widen rapidly.
Looking Ahead
Investors are no longer satisfied with basic access to private markets. They expect operational excellence and clear guidance. Advisors who treat private markets infrastructure with the same seriousness as public markets will scale faster, deepen client relationships and deliver better outcomes.
Those who remain tied to outdated workflows, scattered portals and manual processes will find themselves increasingly unable to keep up with client demand and industry expectations.
Private markets are entering their electronic trading moment. The question is which firms will embrace the systems required for the next decade of growth.