When the Financial Times recently asked “Why everyone is trying to sell you private assets at the moment”, it captured a clear truth: private markets have never been more fashionable. Wealth managers are eager to pitch semi-liquid funds and private-credit products to the affluent. However, the FT story described the symptom, not the cause. The real unlocking of the demand is the infrastructure which has been developed over the last number of years.
What’s changing isn’t that more investors want in, but, for the first time, the system can actually let them in.
For decades, private markers were built for a world of handshakes and very large cheque books. You needed to invest hundreds of thousands, fill out paper forms and accept that your money was going to vanish for seven years. That was all fine when the client was an institution or a billionaire. It’s a bit ridiculous when the investor is a 35-year-old earning £120,000 who can trade global equities in seconds on their phone.
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Those people, HENRYs (High Earners Not Rich Yet), are now the backbone of the affluent economy. They’re financially capable, impatient with archaic infrastructure and allergic to long lock-ups of cash. They’re beyond handholding and need access and expert advice that works.
And finally, it does. Quietly, a new layer of wealthtech infrastructure is making private markets scalable for the first time. Fractionalisation means that a £5,000 investment can buy a slice of something that once required six figures. Digital onboarding and automated compliance have gotten rid of weeks of paperwork into a few minutes of ID verification. AI-driven fund administration is making it viable to run thousands of smaller accounts without sending costs through the roof.
In short, what used to be bespoke can now be mass-produced safely. That’s the real unlocking. Democratisation was never really about the generous side of things, but more about the economics. It’s now possible to make private investing profitable at scale, not just exclusive by design.
According to McKinsey, the global market for asset tokenisation could reach around $2 trillion by 2030, evidence that the technology creating this shift is far more than theory now. At the same time, the secondary market for private-fund stakes has expanded rapidly, hitting about $162 billion in 2024, a 45% increase on the previous year.
Demographics reinforce the story. According to a February 2025 study from HSBC, people in the UK believe you need an average annual income of £213,000 to be wealthy. The figure is around six times the national average income and represents the top 4% of earners.
Regulators have been slowly catching up. In the UK the FCA’s Long-Term Asset Fund regime gives wealth managers a compliant route to semi-liquid exposure in private markets, a middle ground between daily dealing and decade-long lock-ups. In the Gulf, Abu Dhabi’s Global Market and Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority are already writing the rulebooks for tokenised assets and digital securities. We’ve moved away from pilots, and we’re seeing the early pipes of a regulated infrastructure for the next generation of capital.
Transparency is improving as well, although not fast enough. The Institutional Limited Partners Association’s push for standardised fee and performance reporting is gaining ground, with around half the market pledging to adopt. ILPA’s own survey shows roughly 70% of participants plan to implement its updates reporting template, and 52% the new performance standard. Add the rise of AI analytics and blockchain-based audit trails, and the possibility of continuous verification is moving from marketing line to measurable reality.
The momentum is clear, and another recent global survey by State Street found that 55% of asset management executives expect retail investors to provide more than half of all private-market fundraising within the next two years. If that happens, the balance of power between institutions and individuals in capital formation will look radically different.
But let’s be honest, regulators and incumbents still underestimate what’s coming. The next wave of investors doesn’t want some VIP pass to an old system. They expect something different: lower fees and real-time access, along with advisory. They’re looking to buy into private markets because the old or traditional paths to wealth creation, like property and public equities, don’t move the same way anymore.
The FT was right about the appetite, but appetite alone doesn’t build markets. It’s the plumbing and infrastructure. The firms that can combine liquidity with accountability, automation with oversight and strategic advice will be setting the new standard. For everyone else, stop selling exclusivity and start building access because the future of private investing isn’t gated.
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