Kira Mikulecky (KM): This is an area where we're getting demand from across our client base, with every client type. From pure-play private markets managers to traditional asset managers that may have only recently acquired a private market capability, everyone is thinking about this trend and how to how to capture it. So, I think we'll see semi-liquid retail-style vehicles make a meaningful share of private market fundraising. While institutional capital will still anchor the market, the real growth will come from retail and wealth channels.

John Gee-Grant (JGG): The evidence is that semi-liquid, retail-style vehicles will account for a significantly larger share of private market fundraising, but institutional capital will still dominate overall allocations and continue to grow in the coming years.

William Sammons (WS): Based on our projections, by 2030 we expect fundraising between retail and institutional channels to be roughly on par with each other. This assumes that innovation, regulations and democratization will drive fundraising in retail channels at a pace that is about four times higher per year. The retail assets will continue to flow through existing bank and independent wealth channels with further assets being gathered via retirement segments. We anticipate that more established asset owners, in particular, will be looking to decrease their external allocations to alternatives and bring more of those investment capabilities in-house, while also taking stakes in GPs directly.

Peter Beske Nielsen (PBN): We see strong and growing demand from both private individuals and institutional investors for evergreen products, as they offer innovative and convenient access to private markets with long-term compounding benefits.

Traditional closed-end funds, with long lock-up periods and delayed distributions, are not always suited to investors who need greater financial flexibility — particularly individuals who may face unexpected life events that require timely access to capital. Evergreen structures may address this by providing more liquidity, flexibility and, above all, convenience, while still maintaining the benefits of long-term private market exposure.

As awareness and adoption of evergreen structures (private markets solutions allowing investors access to private investments without, or with shorter lock-in periods) increase, we expect these vehicles to represent a steadily larger share of private market fundraising — complementing rather than replacing traditional institutional products.

Susan Doyle (SD): Well, the momentum is clearly with the semi-liquid retail vehicles, and all the advantages that scale offers will make it harder for smaller vehicles to compete without being highly differentiated. So I expect there's going to be a significant amount of growth that comes from semi-liquid retail vehicles, mostly from the wealth side of the business.

But that trajectory depends a lot on education. There's tremendous excitement about private markets, and not as much understanding about the implications of a semi-liquid type of vehicle. People hear “private equity,” for example, and they think about returns that have been generated in closed and commingled vehicles that are illiquid for 10-to -5 years and sometimes longer. And, while the individual deals in semi-liquid vehicles may be the exact same deals, the reality is — in these fund structures, returns from the individual private equity investments get diluted to provide the liquidity. So semi-liquid vehicles are likely to have much lower target returns than closed-end, commingled vehicles because they have a smaller proportion of the illiquid investments in them.

Then the emphasis also shifts from an internal rate of return (IRR) in the closed-ended/commingled world to a time-weighted return in the evergreen world, which can give different returns. And I’m just not sure how much all of this is currently appreciated by individuals or their financial advisors.

Stephen Martin (SM): There's an appreciation — and this varies by jurisdiction — of the fact that retail investors have specific needs in terms of product design features and regulation, and I think that's going to drive a variety of outcomes across different parts of the private investments market globally.

Retail investor access to private markets is a focus of regulators in the United States, Australia and Singapore to name a few. The Australian regulator, Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has expressed concerns about whether or not the products that were ending up in retail hands were sufficiently disclosed and designed correctly. So while the trend is toward democratization, but it could be a case of “two steps forward, one step back.”

SM: There's a lot that still needs to be done, I think. It takes a while for the established approach of GPs selling things to an institutional investor base to be repurposed in a way that's suitable and works for retail investors. Product design and innovation need to be able to provide retail investors with higher levels of protection, capital preservation and greater transparency than what is provided for institutional investors who GPs typically deal with directly. For example, we’ve provided a structure where retail investors can gain exposure to private credit but with an equity buffer or reserve, giving them a stepping stone into a private credit market without taking the first dollar of risk of the portfolio. With private markets being less well established for retail, the education and transparency piece is much more important.

It’s making sure that these products are as advertised — if it is illiquid, it's called that (the label matches the product). And solutions should be offered that give people the ability to manage a retail portfolio without having to take multi-year or decade-long bets on individual managers or products, which is sometimes a pitfall of private markets.

KM: We’re getting questions on how to think about product structuring and the types of partnerships traditional managers should be considering to help them offer access to private markets. Then, of course, there are questions around operations and operating models to support this, as well as distribution. Most private markets asset managers are not as used to this channel, so there's a learning curve in terms of how their distribution team is organized. And this also goes to the supporting tech behind the sales organization, such as whether or not their CRM is structured in the right way.

On the wealth management side, one of the biggest struggles is combining semi-liquid structures with the more traditional liquid structures, and how with the right tools advisors are able to do things like rebalance and review portfolios, accounting for the different levels of risk in doing so.

PBN: Exciting innovations have started emerging within open-architecture platforms that make access to private market strategies more seamless. For example, we recently partnered with a European brokerage platform to offer its clients exposure to one of our evergreen funds through a fractional tokenization structure.

But innovation alone is not enough. As private markets become increasingly accessible to individual investors, it is essential that we as GPs are transparent and take responsibility for education. Intermediaries need to be educated on how private markets differ from investing in the stock market or in ETFs, and what that means for end investors. In particular, individual investors need to understand the implications of lower liquidity, defined redemption windows and the need for a long-term investment horizon — typically at least five years.

JGG: Most products remain siloed by asset class and are designed for institutional investors. Many retail investors care about ease of investment and outcomes, without detailed knowledge of asset class characteristics. Innovation needs to focus on delivering consistently positive returns, income and diversification within a single, accessible and liquid wrapper.

To scale retail participation, modernization is needed across product design, technology, distribution and transparency — with solutions that look and feel like what retail investors already trust, even if the underlying assets are complex.

Gautham Ratnakar (GR): We believe the wrappers suitable for retail investors to access private markets are already available. More innovation needs to happen more around the broader private markets infrastructure and the ability to move beyond products to focus on asset classes. Whether it's through model portfolios, another Separately Managed Account (SMA) vehicle or private ETFs, it's the usability and explainability of the asset class within that vehicle. Traditionally, the industry has been on quarterly, or even annualized, reporting cycles. As you think about retirement, you need to go into daily valuations with better liquidity management and governance. So today, the infrastructure is not there yet, and we see retirement recordkeepers and fund service providers looking at new service models for commingled, multi-asset products in unitized, daily valuation vehicles.

SD: One thing that must happen is that access has to be less expensive. In the United Kingdom, for example, individual investors all the way down to the retail level can access all sorts of private market investments via a digital platform, for far less than you can here in the United States. So, I do think it's evolving and it will continue to change rapidly. But currently, from what I have seen, there are often still far too many fees involved in accessing private market investments, which is going to make it difficult for them to compete with public market returns.

SD: Regulation has greatly increased interest in making private markets accessible. While they have had an allure to many individual investors for a long time, they were out of reach unless you were a high-net-worth investor, as I discussed earlier. But what’s also worth considering is that the more accessible the investment, the more regulation around it, and the more liquidity requirements there are — and the more liquidity — the less return. So there’s a question about where the balance lies.

PBN: Supportive regulation has been a key enabler in opening private markets to a broader base of investors. In Europe, the revised European Long-Term Investment Fund (ELTIF) 2.0 framework is a good example of how supportive regulation can open private markets to more investors. It lowers investment thresholds, expands access to non-professional investors and provides a harmonized set of rules across approximately 30 jurisdictions. In a region as fragmented as Europe, where navigating different national laws can be a barrier, that common standard is essential to make private markets more accessible, transparent and scalable.

In the US, recent Department of Labor guidance has clarified how private market strategies can be included in 401(k) retirement plans. While adoption is still at an early stage, this supportive stance is an important signal. Retirement savings represent a vast pool of long-term capital that could benefit from the diversification and potential return profile of private markets.

WS: Regulators and industry participants are appropriately balancing the need to provide investors with access to diversification and new products — things that will help generate better outcomes for the individual — which regulators and managers are keenly interested in. The challenge is obviously moving from a model that has a certain level of opacity to it and appropriately introducing transparency to create comfort with the regulators that ensures end-investor awareness and an understanding of what they're investing in.

When you look at the retirement channel in particular, regulatory easing has occurred that has opened that opportunity and therefore given asset managers predictability around the level of investment that's required, both from an infrastructure and technology perspective, to be successful and viable in that channel. Retirement provides a unique opportunity for asset managers. This is due to the potential for appropriate time horizon liquidity matching given that retirement money already carries significant illiquidity premiums associated with early withdrawals.

KM: Regulators have definitely helped by creating a clearer, more generally confident environment for participation. While we haven't really seen sweeping rule changes yet, asset managers and product sponsors are more encouraged to explore these new structures. As they should, regulators have continued to prioritize investor protection, foster dialog and clarify some of the boundaries, which is important to helping maintain confidence in the system and among investors.

SM: To date, regulators have had a watchful eye on the rapid rise in retail participation in private markets, which is understandable given the pace of growth. But as the flow of funds continues to move higher, I anticipate regulators will rightly play a more active role in shaping how retail investors access these products. That's an uncertainty not only for private markets in general, but also for the growth of the market as it relates to retail involvement. If you have a couple of bad actors causing poor outcomes for retail investors, it could lead to a significant regulatory tightening. As a consequence, we could see regulation restricting retail investors into certain pockets, because that's the simplest area to place controls on. That’s an important consideration when it comes to this question.

JGG: It is probably too early to determine definitively which private market asset classes will appeal most over the long term. Having said that, where we’ve observed the most interest is in infrastructure assets that many retail investors see every day — and that help develop local and national economies and communities, and create tangible social impact. Investor appetite is underpinned by infrastructure’s role in addressing essential global needs like energy, transport and digital connectivity.

KM: Right now, I think the strongest retail demand in private markets is concentrated in private credit and non-traded real estate vehicles. I expect both will continue to lead growth over the next several years.

Private credit, including in direct lending and business development companies, has become especially attractive because it offers the kind of steady income, shorter duration and structures that more naturally fit into wealth portfolios. In addition, wealth platforms and advisors are looking for alternatives to fixed income, and private credit is becoming more of a core allocation for that reason. Also, it is easier to package private credit into semi-liquid and evergreen fund structures without having some of those longer lockups or higher minimums that you typically see in private equity.

Finally, non-traded Real Estate Investment Trusts, which give investors exposure to real estate, income and inflation protection, have also seen significant traction — and newer versions have improved liquidity and transparency. For many investors, these vehicles remain a large and established gateway to private markets.

GR: I agree — at the moment, it's private credit and real estate that are resonating most with retail investors. Real estate is the one that's most understood, just given the duration of time it’s been available in the market. But we’re also seeing private credit as a prominent asset class for growth, due to its liquidity profile, innovation and the structures that are more conducive to holding the investment.

SD: From my perspective, private equity is a big part of retail investor demand, probably because it has generated the highest returns in the past in those closed-ended vehicles that I mentioned earlier. But I also agree private credit has a lot of interest because it generates a nice income.

PBN: Instead of thinking about individual asset classes, as with any investment strategy, diversification is critical. Not just across asset classes and sectors, but also geographically. Many individual investors remain heavily concentrated in listed shares, bonds and mutual funds, despite public markets representing only a fraction of the overall investable economy. In fact, roughly 90 percent of global companies with revenues above US$100 billion are privately owned. By allocating to private markets, individual investors can gain exposure to a much larger universe of opportunities, building balanced portfolios that better reflect the real economy while also broadening diversification.