Private Markets have moved from a satellite allocation to a structural part of portfolios. Family offices, foundations and wealth managers now run programs of thirty, fifty or more commitments across strategies and vintages.
The portfolios have become more sophisticated. For most investors, the infrastructure around them has not.
What large LPs built
Over two decades, large pension funds, endowments and sovereign investors built a dedicated function for each stage: allocation and pacing, manager research, operational due diligence, data operations and reporting.
The question is no longer whether to invest in Private Markets, but how to run the program.
The mid-sized LP's position
A team of two to five people covers all of these functions at once. Time goes to collecting and re-keying data, at the expense of the decisions that drive returns: pacing, selection, portfolio construction.
Closing the gap
Replicating this infrastructure in-house rarely makes sense below a certain scale. The alternative is to access it: expertise, structured data and technology, operated alongside the LP's own team.