How growing access to private markets is reshaping wealth advisory firms

Private markets are becoming a foundational element of modern portfolio construction for high-net-worth investors.

Peter Epstein, managing director at Allocate, says the shift is unmistakable: “Alternatives are no longer alternative,” he tells InvestmentNews as he shares his experience of working with more than 300 RIAs who use the private markets platform.

According to Epstein, this is not simply a matter of adding a product category but a foundational change in how advisors design and differentiate their firms. “We see advisors using private markets to shape outcomes; alpha potential, diversification, and in a competitive landscape, differentiation.”

He says that private market platforms were never designed with advisors in mind: “Early systems assumed institutional operations; manual (historically paper) subscription documentation, long diligence cycles, and siloed, manual reporting.”

But that structure simply doesn’t translate to the realities of modern wealth management.

“Wealth advisors need the same caliber of access but with a more robust, streamlined workflow, compliance guardrails, and data that flows into their everyday tools. Ultimately that’s still just the beginning,” he says. “It’s about how advisors leverage technology to deliver better client outcomes and more personalized alternative allocations that are bespoke to that specific client's risk, return, liquidity, and personal considerations. That can only happen on an infrastructure that is designed for that level of personalization.”

Today’s alternative-investing workflows remain deeply fragmented, and advisors feel it at every step. Epstein describes the typical experience as “idiosyncratic and fragmented — significant upfront education, then bullet-point emails, PDFs, and very ad hoc in regards to which opportunity is shown to which client.”

The operational costs compound quickly. “That fragmentation multiplies when you have duplicative KYC/AML, error-prone subscriptions, inconsistent data across custodians and reporting tools, and limited visibility into cash flows, fees, and exposures,” he says. “The result is operational and advisor fatigue and a poor client experience.”

A unified system, Epstein stresses, is no longer a luxury. “A unified platform reduces error rates, normalizes data, and gives advisors a single source of truth across the full investment lifecycle. It also creates a foundational layer for more refined and personalized allocations.”

Epstein sees a clear direction of travel in private markets. “The trend line is toward standardized data and repeatable workflows: digital subscriptions, faster onboarding cycles, normalized position/cash-flow data, and improved secondary/liquidity options — without losing the dispersion and alpha drivers that make private markets compelling.”

That evolution is central to Allocate’s strategy. The firm, Epstein says, leans into this by offering “integrations to major advisor reporting systems and a single dashboard that normalizes positions, cash flows, and documents across a client’s private holdings.”

How tech eases the burden

As adoption expands, technology becomes essential for scale.

“As alternatives adoption scales, technology will be critical to operationalizing pre-investment and post-investment workflows across all alternatives asset classes,” he says, noting that tech reduce friction. “Digital suitability and subscriptions, automated capital call management, normalized data feeds, and embedded compliance and operations.”

Epstein believes the wealth-tech and alternatives landscape is changing rapidly. “We’re not that far away,” he says.

The next generation of platforms will include personalization at scale, allowing advisors to tailor product menus, pacing models, and liquidity budgets to each client; full white-label experiences where onboarding, documents, statements, and portals carry the advisor’s brand; turnkey white-label vehicles that allow RIAs to launch feeders with minimal operational burden; streamlined reporting through automated ingestion and normalization of capital calls, distributions, valuations, and performance; integrated data pipelines that allow private assets to sit alongside public holdings in one view; and client-ready insights that make communication easier and more intuitive.

Advisors under pressure

Advisors are feeling pressure from every direction. “They are seeing it on all fronts,” Epstein says. “As companies stay private for longer, private markets are increasingly becoming core questions that advisors face from their clients. If an advisor is not offering alternatives, clients are able to access those opportunities elsewhere.”

Meanwhile, innovation is accelerating. “Asset managers and technology, infrastructure, and operating partners continue to innovate with new product design, more purpose-built technology, and alleviating historical pain points… creating a flywheel effect that’s raising the overall demand for alternatives.”

RIAs that treat alternatives as a program, not a product, are pulling ahead. One increasingly popular strategy, Epstein says, is launching white-label feeder funds.

“This has become increasingly viable for many firms, given the growing alternatives allocation, and the reduced cost structure for launching and managing these vehicles.” These structures allow firms to “control menu design, pricing, and communications under their own brand,” while pairing them with “automated ingestion of capital calls, distributions, valuations, and performance.” The combination, he says, “turns alts from a black box into a repeatable, scalable differentiator for growth and retention.”

The next five years

Epstein sees three defining forces shaping the next five years: growth of private markets, rising advisor adoption, and better infrastructure.

But he believes the biggest transformation will come from AI. “AI is one of the most impactful new technologies we’ve ever seen,” he says.

Over time, AI will become the personalization engine powering advisors’ alternative programs by “ingesting lifecycle data across both new and held-away assets, surfacing exposures and pacing/liquidity insights, and translating complex documents into client-ready intelligence.” Ultimately, he says, AI will turn “disparate private positions into tailored, household-level portfolios.”