ARTICLE
CEO Perspective: Access, liquidity and education in private markets
Bloomberg Professional Services
- Private market firms are exploring how to serve a broader range of investors alongside continued institutional demand.
- Expanding access is raising new questions around product structure, liquidity, risk management and investor education.
- AI infrastructure is emerging as a key entry point for individual capital.
As interest in private markets surge, wealth managers are exploring new opportunities to bridge the gap between institutional-grade returns and individual portfolios. But expanding access to private markets also raises new questions around liquidity, transparency and investor suitability.
At Bloomberg Invest, here’s how industry leaders are looking to private markets to meet modern retirement expectations and deliver more resilient, personalized outcomes to clients.
Broadening the investor base
For the past two decades, growth in private markets has been driven primarily by institutions increasing their allocations to private and alternative assets. The majority of private investing today is still done for institutions, and Connor Teskey, CEO, Brookfield Asset Management predicts that institutional investors alone will double the size of the private markets over the next decade.
But he points to a new engine for expansion: individual investors.
“You have this new additional growth lever, which is the individual market,” says Teskey. “We think of the individual market being wealth, retail, insurance/annuity and 401(k)/retiree markets. Globally, that market is actually twice as big as the institutional market.”
Despite that potential scale, individuals remain under allocated to private assets relative to institutions; however, Teskey sees rising demand for capital across private markets, supporting continued growth from both institutional and individual investors.
A test of product structure and risk management
According to Invesco President and CEO Andrew Schlossberg, as new investors enter the private markets, moments of stress will yield insights about managers’ capabilities to serve the segment.
“We have lots of new investors into the market: individual investors, wealth investors, increasingly we’ll see over time retirement plan investors. Frankly, I think we need a little bit of a stress test scenario to help us work through who the strong players are.”
As headlines reflect deepening concerns about private credit, Teskey notes that they apply to a limited portion of the asset class: “There are undoubtedly some concerns about direct lending today. A lot of capital came in very quickly, spreads tightened and there are maybe some concerns about corporate quality. But it’s important to recognize that it is only a very small sub-segment of the broader credit markets.”
Schlossberg agrees that the current cycle is normal and temporary. “I think in the long term we’re going to be fine, in the short run it could be a little bumpy.”
Education is crucial for institutional and individual investors
For any investor dipping their toe into private markets for the first time, understanding how the assets differ from more familiar vehicles like stocks and bonds is key—especially when it comes to liquidity. Teskey says that Brookfield’s approach to education for individual investors is very similar to what they offer to institutional clients.
“The alternatives sector was built on the institutional market. In that market, we would have a client team that would go speak to individual LPs on a recurring basis, provide them updates and incredibly detailed explanations about the different products and solutions we offer,” he says. “We are doing the exact same thing for individual investors: we have a dedicated team that’s growing very rapidly around the world.”
Schlossberg also notes that individual investors are generally equipped to understand private markets. “Individual investors are very sophisticated, and most of the investors in these funds are advised.” He points out that private assets only stand to represent a small portion—likely not more than 15%—of an individual investor’s portfolio. “Liquidity’s an important factor, but these are long-term investments in a natural sense.”
And from an advisory standpoint, Schlossberg says that reminding investors to focus on their asset allocations as opposed to letting emotions drive their decisions is a general investment principle that applies to all investments, not just those in the private markets.
AI is creating investment opportunities across public and private markets
AI innovation and the buildout of its supporting infrastructure, including data centers and energy resources, is a source of demand among individual investors for exposure to private assets. “The AI buildout and the demand is positive for the economy all around,” says Schlossberg. He observes AI as a driving force not just within private credit, but in all forms of real assets across both public and private markets.
“Investing in both the digital infrastructure and the energy infrastructure production that supports AI is one of the largest investment themes at Brookfield today,” says Teskey. He points out that hyperscalers and sovereigns, common counterparties for AI infrastructure investments, demonstrate exceptional credit quality: “We are only building when we get a long-term contract, and we are not taking a risk on the monetization or the performance of that compute, but rather simply on the corporate credit quality of that counterpart.” He also notes that demand in the space is currently producing very attractive risk-adjusted returns.
Ultimately, Teskey says that offering individual investors opportunities to invest in private markets enables greater diversification in their portfolios, as well as providing exposure to some key investment themes that are more prominent in private markets than public markets.
“These vehicles inherently work, and if they are structured appropriately and managed appropriately, and both the managers and the investors understand the parameters, they can be very beneficial.”
Insights in this article are based on discussions at the Bloomberg Invest event held in New York in March 2026.