Affluent American investors are warming to private markets at a pace that is outrunning the advisors who serve them, according to a major new study – and the firms and practitioners who move fastest to close that gap stand to capture a significant wave of capital.
The 2026 FTSE Russell Wealth Pulse Survey found that nearly nine in 10 investors with a financial advisor would allocate to private markets following a strong recommendation from that advisor. Yet only around one in four (26%) reported having had a detailed conversation about private markets with their advisor, and nearly half (48%) said the topic had never come up at all.
The survey covering 600 U.S. retail investors with a minimum of $500,000 in investable assets, including 393 millionaires, come at a moment when private markets – spanning private equity, private credit, private real estate and private infrastructure – are no longer exclusively the domain of institutional investors
One in three affluent respondents (32%) said they already hold private market investments, with the majority of those investors (61%) having entered the asset class within the past five years. Among those currently invested, 74% have allocated 10% or more of their portfolio to private markets.
The generational split is stark. Nearly two-thirds of Millennials surveyed (67%) already invest in private markets, compared with 30% of Gen X investors and just 11% of Baby Boomers.
Looking ahead, 56% of Millennials not yet invested in private markets said they may consider doing so, compared to 19% of Boomers, suggesting the trend will intensify as wealth transfers to younger cohorts.
The survey makes it clear that financial advisors are the primary gatekeepers and sherpas to private markets for affluent clients. More than three-quarters of investors already in private markets (77%) accessed the asset class through a financial advisor, with 44% doing so through a wealth manager or private bank.
What is equally clear is the scale of the untapped opportunity. While 55% of advised investors said they were interested in private markets regardless of a recommendation, that figure surges to 89% on the back of a strong advisor recommendation.
"Our research shows investors are interested in private markets, but they're looking for guidance on how to incorporate and use them, which means activation runs through the advisor," said Adam Gebler, Americas head of Wealth at FTSE Russell. "This creates a clear opportunity to better equip their advisors with the tools, education and solutions investors are seeking."
The demand for education reinforces that view. Fully 72% of affluent respondents said they want to learn more about private markets, and advisor-led discussions ranked among the top three preferred information sources for 62% of that cohort.
The advisor opportunity is real, but so are the structural barriers. Frank Anduiza, head of Americas Sales at Vistra Fund Solutions, said the research exposes a bottleneck that goes beyond advisor willingness.
"The research highlights there's a big gap between investor appetite and advisor engagement," Anduiza said. "This shows that the real bottlenecks are education, operational readiness and scalable infrastructure."
To serve wealth channel clients effectively, Anduiza argued that the private markets industry must undergo a structural overhaul. "The industry spent decades building private markets for institutions," he said. "Now it has to redesign them for the wealth channel, with evergreen structures, greater transparency, more frequent reporting and a very different investor experience."
Right now, the practical challenges for advisors are significant. Private markets have historically lacked the standardized reporting, daily pricing and transparent benchmarks that characterize public equity and fixed income markets – features that advisors and their clients have come to expect as baseline requirements. Those deficiencies, the FTSE Russell survey suggests, represent a material drag on adoption.
Performance uncertainty is the single biggest barrier cited by survey respondents, named by 42% of those not yet invested in private markets – ahead of high fees (36%) and complexity (35%). High return potential, meanwhile, is the primary draw for 67% of affluent investors.
The line between those two data points – return appeal undercut by performance uncertainty – points directly to the role of standardized benchmarks. The survey found that 92% of affluent investors believe it is important to compare investments against a benchmark, and 78% said the availability of standardized benchmarks increases their confidence in private markets.
In another showing of the generation gap, 62% of Millennials rated benchmarks as very important, compared with 40% of Gen X and 36% of Boomers – further evidence that the next generation of wealth clients will demand the same or similar transparency they've come to expect from public markets.
"As private assets move into the mainstream wealth conversation, investors and advisors are demanding the same transparency, benchmarking, and performance clarity they expect everywhere else in finance," said Stuart Tait, head of LPPA Partnerships, UK & EU, at Carta. "That's easier said than done in private markets, where performance data has historically been fragmented, reporting standards vary widely and investments aren't valued or benchmarked with the same consistency as public markets."
Tait added that transparency will be a competitive differentiator as capital flows into the space. "The firms that can deliver that visibility and turn a traditionally opaque asset class into one investors can more easily understand, compare, and trust, will be best positioned to capture this next wave of capital flowing into private markets."
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