Franklin Templeton has launched a suite of Private Markets Model Portfolios built on Corastone's digital infrastructure platform, the latest step in the asset manager's accelerating effort to make alternative investments more accessible to financial advisors and their clients.
The new portfolios, announced Monday, use a single-subscription, separately managed account-style structure that allows advisors to give clients diversified exposure to private market assets – including private equity, private credit, and real estate – without navigating the operational tangle that has long made alternatives difficult to scale across managed account platforms.
The launch comes as Franklin Templeton's alternatives business has grown sharply. The firm reported $280 billion in alternative assets under management as of March, representing roughly 16% of its total $1.74 trillion in AUM. That figure was $249.7 billion just 13 months earlier, reflecting what's been described as a deliberate acquisition-driven strategy to build out one of the largest alternatives platforms on the planet.
For advisors, the appeal of private markets model portfolios lies in what they take away as much as what they offer. Historically, incorporating private market funds into a client portfolio required navigating separate subscription documents, manual processing, and fragmented administrative workflows – a burden that kept many advisory practices on the sidelines. The Franklin Templeton-Corastone structure attempts to collapse those steps into a single integration point.
"This launch reflects the evolution of private markets in client portfolios and the need for structures that allow advisors to implement those allocations efficiently," said George Stephan, chief operating officer of Global Wealth Management Private Markets at Franklin Templeton. "By supporting a single-ticket, SMA-style structure, these model portfolios are designed to help reduce operational complexity and improve scalability, while enabling advisors to implement diversified private market exposure within a professionally managed portfolio framework."
The portfolios offer access to Franklin Templeton's broader alternatives roster, which spans Lexington Partners for private equity secondaries and co-investments, Clarion Partners for private real estate, Benefit Street Partners for private credit, and additional capabilities in hedged strategies, Franklin Ventures, and digital assets.
Corastone, which has described itself as a "hyperscaler" for private market investing, underpins the operational layer of the new model portfolios. Built on a permissioned blockchain network, the platform connects general partners, wealth managers, and fund administrators through a single shared system – replacing the patchwork of point-to-point integrations and manual interventions that characterize much of today's private markets infrastructure.
"Private markets have historically been difficult to scale across advisor-managed model portfolios due to operational complexity and fragmented workflows," said Rashad Kurbanov, Co-Founder and CEO of Corastone. "This solution combines Franklin Templeton's investment capabilities with Corastone's infrastructure, making it easier for advisors to implement and manage diversified private market allocations within client portfolios."
Corastone's trajectory has moved quickly since its platform went live in November last year with Apollo, Morgan Stanley, and a leading transfer agent as initial participants; Franklin Templeton and KKR joined shortly after. By March, the platform had signed on additional institutional investors, including Fidelity Investments, Future Standard, and Hamilton Lane – all asset managers looking to standardize operating infrastructure across private market workflows.
"We've seen firsthand how operational complexity can limit participation in private markets," said Griff Norville, head of Technology Solutions at Hamilton Lane, which is now both an investor in and participant on the Corastone network. "Corastone's platform removes that friction, which we believe will help unlock the industry's next growth phase."
The Franklin Templeton launch arrives at a moment when private markets are reshaping wealth management more broadly. Retail-accessible vehicles, including interval funds and tender offer funds, have drawn billions in inflows over the past two years as wirehouses, RIAs, and independent broker-dealers have worked to build out alternatives allocations for mass-affluent and high-net-worth clients.
Still, operational friction has remained one of the most commonly cited obstacles. A 2024 survey by the CAIA Association found that more than half of wealth managers identified back-office complexity as a primary barrier to increasing alternatives allocations.
Clients accessing the Franklin Templeton portfolios will hold direct ownership of the underlying funds rather than investing through a pooled fund-of-funds vehicle – a structure that the firm says supports greater transparency and more frequent rebalancing, subject to fund terms and liquidity provisions.
For advisors navigating an increasingly complex alternatives landscape, understanding how model portfolios handle private market rebalancing will be essential as more firms roll out similar structures.
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