Georges Archibald on retail demand and alternatives in 2026
Expect continued growth in retail channel demand for alternative assets, driven by new liquid structures and strong market interest. Partnering with third-party experts will remain vital for operational efficiency. Major 2026 trends will include increased investment in data centers and AI, enhanced transparency, and rapid innovation in technology like DLT and AI to support greater liquidity, transferability, and sustainable business growth.
Retail channel demand
In 2025 we saw continued growth themes play out across alternative asset managers including access to more retail channel demand. This retail channel demand has been expressed through intermediaries principally, but we are also seeing asset flows further develop to include more liquid and semi-liquid retail-oriented structures globally. What is clear is that this theme is broadly evidenced by the market embracing newer growth asset classes that are investible based on among others return profile, either in private fund format or their registered analog, and being attractive and in fact demanded by the market.
Enduring partnerships with third parties
Investment operations, alongside the complexity and the costs associated with investment management, have led managers and fund sponsors to continue partnering with expert third parties to deliver a robust and globally compliant infrastructure across products. These products continue to range across the more traditional alternative asset arenas, like for hedge funds, but then also to growth asset classes like private credit and real estate that consume outsized manager operational bandwidth to a significant degree, hence being an attractive outsourcing opportunity to further evaluate.
Global thematic growth drivers
It would be remiss not to mention some other global thematic growth drivers including secular asset flows into investment vehicles supporting data centers and AI computer power globally. There is also increasing asset owner engagement in alternative asset classes, seen ranging through examples spanning middle east sovereigns to the superannuation funds in Australia, with much in between. A consistent theme across these markets is the importance of reporting transparency, timeliness, and facility.
The emergence of asset level insights
Separately, but also underpinning asset class opportunities for private markets is the extension of technology to facilitate faster product creation, transaction processing, and liquidity. Here, we have made significant investments across Digital Ledger Technology (“DLT”) and AI to deliver on tokenised products but then also with AI overlays, allowing for asset level insights not previously possible at the touch of a button.
More innovation and growth expected
Looking ahead, we see promising opportunities to deliver leading infrastructure to funds, greater operational efficiency, and asset class transparency. Facilitating future business sustainability will be supported through digital, other DLT, and AI capabilities, increasing the capacity for transferability, discovery, and ultimately liquidity, by driving relationship vectors and asset class growth.
As the leading global asset servicer for private markets, we are poised to help the market harness these opportunities and will leverage our expertise to fuel the infrastructure to further partner and unlock sustainable growth.
