What ALTSUK told us about the next decade of private markets

Recap and analysis from ALTSUK London in September 2026, prepared by Canoe Intelligence Account Executive Patrick Wong, CFA.

Key takeaways

• Panellists pointed to a narrowing illiquidity premium in private markets over the past decade, and cautioned that allocators can no longer assume it’s a given.
• Continuation funds add a governance layer: speakers described the decision to roll or exit as increasingly an underwriting decision, not a formality.
• Panellists identified distributions as the top concern in PE and secondaries right now, driven by fewer exits.
• The total portfolio approach (TPA) is drawing growing interest as a framework for managing forecasting uncertainty, though panellists cautioned it isn’t a fit for everyone.
• Speakers put direct lending at roughly half of the private credit market; as it commoditises, they pointed to a borrower’s market emerging, with compressing spreads, looser terms, and early signs of stress.

Private markets aren’t the alternative asset class anymore. They’re a core allocation, and the sessions at ALTSUK made that clear. ALTSUK is an education-focused investor event run by the CAIA Association, CFA UK, and Markets Group, bringing together allocators, GPs, and academics for a full day on the issues facing private markets today. Canoe’s Patrick Wong spent the day there, and the sessions kept circling back to one underlying question: as private markets mature, do the assumptions that built the industry still hold?

Here’s what he brought back.

Does the illiquidity premium still exist?

The illiquidity premium is the excess return investors expect for locking up capital in private markets instead of holding liquid public assets. Panellists pointed out that this premium has narrowed meaningfully over the past decade. Twenty years ago, it was widely treated as automatic, and today it increasingly needs to be underwritten structure by structure, deal by deal. Multiple sessions returned to the same point: speakers no longer see the reward for illiquidity as a given.

Why continuation funds create a new governance decision

A continuation fund lets a GP hold an asset longer whilst giving LPs the choice to roll their stake forward or exit for liquidity. Panellists described that choice as increasingly a live underwriting decision, rather than a formality baked into the fund’s original terms, and cautioned that LPs who can’t evaluate the roll-or-exit decision well risk giving away the illiquidity premium they were meant to be capturing in the first place.

​

Closed-ended vs. evergreen funds: why alignment matters

Panellists noted that closed-ended funds, which lock up capital for a fixed term, continue to suit institutional mandates built around long horizons, while evergreen and open-ended funds, which allow ongoing subscriptions and redemptions, are opening private markets to retail and wealth investors. More structures, several speakers agreed, mean more access.

But speakers cautioned that access comes at a cost. A vehicle with redemption rights is less likely to compensate an investor for illiquidity the way a locked-up structure does, in their view. What’s tuned correctly at launch can drift as flows change, raising additional governance questions when compared to closed-ended funds.

Tokenisation is moving faster than expected

Tokenisation of private funds converts fund interests into digital tokens that can trade more flexibly than traditional LP interests. Multiple speakers flagged it as the mechanism most likely to broaden access to private markets in the near term, noting that the pace of movement here is accelerating.

What is the total portfolio approach (TPA), and why is it gaining traction?

The total portfolio approach is a framework that evaluates every asset and decision against the organisation’s total risk and objectives, rather than managing asset classes in separate silos. Panellists noted growing interest in TPA as forecasting is becoming more difficult. TPA forces every function within an organisation to align around a holistic view of risk instead of optimising independently. That said, not every organisation is in a position or has the resources to implement such an approach.

For pension plans specifically, speakers drew a clear distinction: alpha isn’t the objective, funded status is. Total risk, they argued, is the metric that matters, measured against the plan’s actual mandate rather than a generic performance benchmark.

Regulation, AI, and new externalities in private markets

Speakers discussed how companies are increasingly handling enforcement of standards internally, often well ahead of where government regulation actually reaches. This matters most in emerging sectors, where new externalities arise and require active management: child safety and geopolitical risk for AI, environmental impact and orbital debris for space.

What’s driving Private Credit 2.0?

Panellists put direct lending at roughly half of the private credit market, and noted that it’s commoditising fast. That shift is creating something closer to a borrower’s market, with speakers pointing to compressing spreads, looser terms, and early signs of stress showing up in some deals. They noted that this is not uniform, with material stress gaps opening up between managers. Against that backdrop, several speakers said allocators are also looking further afield for less correlated cash flow streams: litigation finance and life settlements were both mentioned as drawing real interest over the past several years. As new risks keep surfacing in headlines, speakers expect investors to keep leaning on niche credit strategies to manage them.

Why are distributions the biggest concern in PE and secondaries right now?

Panellists identified distributions, particularly from 2020–2022 vintages, as the top concern in PE and secondaries positioning right now. The mechanism they described was fewer exits: with fewer realisations happening, capital calls are outpacing distributions, leaving LPs in a more cash-negative position than they had planned for.

Separately, several speakers pointed to valuation differences between private equity and public equities. Because they aren’t marked to market as frequently, PE valuations tend to be smoother and can lag public market moves, even though the two asset classes tend to move in the same broad direction over time. Panellists were careful to frame this as a distinct dynamic from the distribution slowdown, not a cause of it.

Secondaries are becoming the release valve, letting LPs reallocate capital and shift toward more favourable vintage weightings. But panellists also flagged the risk of over-diversification: too many GP relationships may dilute returns instead of protecting them. Lastly, they pointed to DPI (distributions to paid-in capital) as deserving closer scrutiny, especially in continuation fund structures; ratios can be distorted as the same GP converts unrealised value into a distribution through a sale into a vehicle it also manages.

Why better data infrastructure matters more now

Numerous themes from ALTSUK point to the same underlying pressure: private markets are asking allocators to make faster, better-underwritten decisions with data that hasn’t traditionally moved fast enough to support them. Governance decisions on continuation funds and DPI analysis on secondaries both depend on complete, timely fund data, not data that arrives weeks later. Headline numbers don’t tell the same story they used to. It’s individual holdings underneath that provide a more granular picture of what is actually happening in a portfolio.

That’s the gap Canoe Intelligence was built to close. Our mission is to arm alternative investors to act with the decisiveness of public markets, and that starts with getting the underlying data right, fast, and at scale.

Thanks to the CAIA Association, CFA UK, and Markets Group for putting together a day that earned every minute of the room’s attention. If you want to talk through what you heard, or how better data infrastructure fits into any of these shifts, Patrick and the team would love to continue the conversation.

About Canoe Intelligence
Canoe Intelligence (“Canoe”) is the intelligence infrastructure powering how the world invests in alts. Our AI-native platform automates the manual data processing, cutting operational costs and risk while future-proofing alts infrastructure for long-term growth. Timely, accurate, and comprehensive data arms investment teams to act with the decisiveness of public markets. With Canoe, it’s all about making Alts, smarter. Learn more at canoeintelligence.com.