FE fundinfo's Maryam Longrus: The changing investor base reshaping private markets

This article by Maryam Longrus, Head of Private Markets, was originally published in Investment Week in October 2026.

Private markets have historically been shaped by institutional investors. For the past two decades, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and endowments have driven the industry’s growth, influencing everything from product design to distribution. That model is beginning to change. Reforms such as ELTIF 2.0 have lowered barriers to wealth investors, while asset managers increasingly recognise that institutional capital alone is unlikely to sustain the next phase of growth. At the same time, a new generation of wealth investors is emerging, bringing different expectations around transparency and the role investments play in achieving long-term financial and personal goals. 

The question is no longer whether wealth investors will play a larger role in private markets, but whether managers are prepared for what that shift demands. Wealth investors do not typically behave like institutions. They expect greater accessibility, simpler investment journeys and, increasingly, investments that reflect their long-term objectives and values. Managers that continue to build products primarily with institutional investors in mind may find the evolving wealth channel difficult to crack.

A changing investor base is reshaping private markets

The opportunity for private markets is now being driven by both regulation and changing client demographics. Research has found that under-40s now make up 32% of the average adviser’s client base, while 96% of advisers say the proportion of under-50 clients they advise continues to grow. This represents a significant shift in the advice market, bringing a generation of investors with different expectations around how and where their money is invested.

Those changing expectations are already influencing adviser conversations, and ESG provides a clear example. Younger investors are placing greater emphasis on ensuring their investments reflect their long-term values alongside financial returns, prompting advisers to look more closely at opportunities that support sustainability and long-term growth. More broadly, advisers are increasingly looking beyond traditional public markets as they seek greater diversification and a wider range of return opportunities for clients. Private markets are increasingly becoming part of that conversation.

Why infrastructure is well placed to benefit

Not every private market asset class is equally well positioned to meet these changing expectations. Infrastructure stands out because its defining characteristics – stable, inflation-linked cash flows, relatively low correlation to public markets and long investment horizons – closely align with what many wealth investors and their advisers are looking for: diversification away from listed markets while protecting purchasing power over time.

This is a different proposition from the traditional returns-led focus often associated with private equity. It is also better aligned with the needs of advisers who are building financial plans over decades rather than managing institutional mandates with fixed investment horizons. As wealth investors increasingly prioritise resilience alongside returns, infrastructure has the potential to become an increasingly important component of private market allocations.

Why turn-key structures are gaining momentum

Infrastructure will not be the only beneficiary of this shift. As private markets become more widely adopted by wealth investors, product structure will become just as important as asset class. Advisers need solutions that can be integrated into client portfolios without the complexity that has traditionally characterised institutional private market investing.

Turn-key investment structures – ready-made, professionally managed vehicles that give investors access to private markets without having to build or negotiate exposure themselves – are therefore gaining momentum. Multi-strategy funds, fund of funds and secondaries are emerging as particularly strong fits for the wealth channel because they remove much of the complexity associated with building private market exposure while delivering diversified access through a single investment.

Fund of funds are particularly well suited to this shift because they solve an access problem that wealth investors typically cannot solve for themselves. The strongest general partners naturally prioritise  relationships with a relatively small number of institutional limited partners (LPs), meaning direct access is often unavailable to the wealth market. Fund of funds managers bridge that gap by curating exposure to high quality managers and underlying investments that would otherwise remain out of reach, while also delivering diversification through a single investment.

Secondaries offer a similar advantage, with the added benefit of timing. They provide the same diversification logic as fund of funds, and against the backdrop of a well-documented backlog of exits across the private equity market, they also present a compelling entry point into more mature portfolios. 

For wealth investors and advisers who do not have the scale or resources to build private market  allocations manager by manager, these turn-key structures meaningfully lower the barriers to constructing coherent, diversified private market portfolios - making private markets more accessible to the next generation of wealth investors entering the market.

Distribution will determine who succeeds

None of this opportunity will be realised through product innovation alone. As private market products reach a broader wealth audience, the operational infrastructure supporting them becomes just as important as the investment proposition itself. Wealth distribution brings more investors, more intermediaries, more jurisdictions and more reporting obligations than traditional institutional mandates.

Managers therefore need connected data across distributors and advisers, documentation and disclosure processes that can scale efficiently, and genuine visibility into where their products are being held and by whom. As private markets become more widely distributed through wealth channels, understanding investor demand and distribution performance will become a strategic capability.

Product innovation has opened the door to the wealth market. The firms that succeed from here will be those that can distribute products efficiently, support advisers at scale, build the data infrastructure, and develop the distribution intelligence needed to understand where demand is emerging and how it is evolving. As private markets enter their next phase of growth, competitive advantage will belong to the managers that are best able to combine product innovation with operational excellence.