Joanne Job on private markets and governance in 2026
Clients in pensions and private wealth will be seeking more integrated, tech-enabled investment solutions in 2026. There's also a big push towards private market access, improving governance, and using technology like AI and tokenisation for efficiency. Resilience, diversification, and clear reporting matter most, while venture capital and ESG-linked strategies are gaining traction. Demand for specialist managers and due diligence is up, and family offices are institutionalising to keep pace with growing market complexity.
Trends and themes that dominated our sector and clients in 2025
In 2025, UK Local Government Pension Scheme (“LGPS”) pooling faced practical challenges, requiring progress on tight timelines while managing governance and operational demands. There was a renewed emphasis on defining local investment and selecting strategies and managers for regional pension schemes, driving demand for clearer frameworks and guidance. This focus is expected to persist in 2026 and beyond.
Another key trend was the rise of family offices in global hubs like Dubai, with families institutionalising their investment processes and governance, increasing the need for multi-jurisdictional advisory support. Investors gave greater priority to strategies offering stable income, dependable cashflow, and resilience, preferring private market allocations for downside protection. Asset backed lending attracted interest due to its security and transparent cashflows.
In Europe, there was growing momentum for natural capital and real-world asset strategies, supporting ESG goals and offering non-correlated, inflation-linked returns. Institutional investors sought opportunities in secondaries and NAV finance to manage liquidity needs, while capital preservation remained central for family offices and private wealth, with interest in continuation funds and income-oriented strategies. Governance, reporting, and operational readiness became increasingly important, with allocators demanding better data and oversight, and managers raising standards.
Today, clients are looking for integrated solutions combining custody, administration, reporting, and advisory, and we are developing unified capabilities to meet these needs.
Rising demand for tailored solutions
Integrated solutions combining custody, administration, risk management, compliance, performance measurement, reporting, and governance support will be required by UK LGPS Pools as they increase in size and take a greater role in managing assets for their member LGPS funds.
Continued demand for due diligence on funds, either a combination of investment and operational due diligence or just operational due diligence from institutional investors looking for the best private market funds.
The ability to conduct due diligence on tokenisation and digital infrastructure has attracted growing interest as clients explored how digital feeders, automated processes, and how this new architecture would impact their portfolios.
The major focus areas for clients in 2026
- How LGPS funds will manage integration into new pools
UK LGPS clients will be focused on how to achieve smooth integration into the evolving pool structures, including the transition of assets and processes to the new pool structures. LGPS Pools will require clearer capability mapping, stronger risk, and performance oversight, and more consistent processes as they scale. Independent guidance will be important as funds transition and seek confidence that local priorities are preserved within a broader pooled model. - Private markets access for private wealth and family offices
Private wealth clients and family offices are focusing on more professional access to private markets. This includes clearer investment frameworks, stronger operational processes, robust governance, and the ability to manage commitments, cash flows, and reporting with institutional discipline.
They increasingly require integrated support spanning custody, administration, data architecture, analytics and advisory to ensure transparent oversight and consistent decision making. As allocations grow, these investors are seeking partners who can simplify complexity and provide a scalable end to end solution that brings private markets into a controlled, well- governed investment environment.
Family offices are also focusing on deal-level activity, but may require some support in this area, for example in co-investment underwriting typically within tight timeframes and associated operational and governance aspects.
Within wealth manager channels, tokenisation of investments may allow for greater investor access to private markets and liquidity via funds over time, although this is a nascent area.
- Access to specialist managers in a more selective market
With dispersion widening across private markets, allocators are focusing on managers with distinctive origination, pricing advantage, or real asset-backed expertise. Specialist sourcing and more rigorous selection processes will be a key priority. - Increased fundraising efforts
Manager readiness assessments are expected to be in demand as managers focused on closing institutional credibility gaps across governance, risk, valuation, operations, and reporting. - The Renewed Role of Venture Capital in Domestic Innovation
Venture capital is emerging as a key focus for clients seeking to support domestic economic growth and capture early-stage opportunities. Increasingly, VC is viewed as a strategic avenue to access innovative ecosystems across sectors such as technology, life sciences, and advanced manufacturing where the UK is a world leader. For clients, this represents an opportunity to help drive innovation and competitiveness within the domestic market and a portfolio diversification strategy, providing exposure to long-duration themes that complement more established private market allocations, while aligning with national and regional policy agendas.
Beyond financial returns, venture capital can play a critical role in supporting local economic activity where real estate and traditional resource-based or natural capital strategies, such as agriculture and land, are limited. By backing early-stage companies, investors can foster innovation, job creation, and technological leadership within their home markets and create positive externalities locally.
Positive drivers in 2026
Persistent macro and political uncertainty is shaping a stronger focus on resilience and diversification. Clients are increasingly aware of concentration risk in global equities, the dominance of a small group of mega cap companies, and correlation across public markets. These trends are pushing investors to look for more diversified, real economy, and cashflow based strategies with clearer underlying fundamentals.
The continued institutionalisation of family office investment processes will also have a meaningful positive impact. As more families adopt structured governance, clearer allocation frameworks and more professional oversight, the quality of decision making improves. This supports deeper engagement with advisory services and integrated platform solutions, allowing clients to build more disciplined, long-term private markets programmes.
Technology and tokenised fund infrastructure will increasingly work together as one source of efficiency. Better data systems, automated reporting and digital investor records will reduce operational friction and improve transparency. As these tools become part of everyday processes, managers and investors need to understand their impact on private markets.
Managing rising complexity across private markets
Requirements around valuation, liquidity, documentation, reporting and regulation are increasing faster than many clients or managers can comfortably absorb. Family offices in particular risk information overload as fund documentation, data demands, and operational processes multiply. Standardised frameworks and curated guidance will be essential.
Manager dispersion will also be significant. With differences in performance, governance, and discipline widening, selecting high quality managers will require deeper analysis and stronger operational scrutiny.
UK LGPS Funds, particularly those transitioning to a new Pool, must ensure that day to day activities and operations remain uninterrupted during the transfer of assets and arrangements, to ensure that member benefits are protected.
The role of AI and technology advances in shaping private markets 2026
For clients, it will support clearer, faster, and more consistent decision making by improving how information is gathered, compared, and interpreted across a growing volume of materials. For GPs, it will encourage more transparent, timely and data driven engagement with investors. Together, this will help both sides navigate complexity and build greater confidence in long term allocation decisions.
More broadly, advances in technology and digital infrastructure will strengthen transparency and reporting. AI enabled data architecture and digital registries will reduce operational friction, improve data flow and make it easier for clients to track exposures and understand how their private markets programmes evolve over time. This will support more disciplined, long term investment planning and reinforce the value of integrated advisory and operational solutions.
