As we get accustomed to the calendar reading 2026, there is a curious mix of apprehension and enthusiasm for market health. By the end of June 2025, global assets under management (AUM) soared to a record $147 trillioni while the year ended with easing monetary policy, regulatory restraint, and AI dominating conversations. Asset management firms are forging ahead in adapting to shifting trends in portfolio management. However, not all firms are taking home the gold medal. “Some firms are pulling ahead. Those with competitive advantages grounded in proprietary access to distribution, scaled multi-asset alternative platforms, and credible whole portfolio solutions are capturing a disproportionate share of flows,” per McKinsey.
Firms are pushing harder to detach from reliance on older technology operations systems, now motivated by the need to integrate AI agents and comply with the multi-asset, multi-strategy mandate. Asset management is changing and firms are seeking modern portfolio management technology, wary of siloed datasets and legacy systems that slow workflows and hamper post-trade operations, including portfolio accounting and analysis. Here are some ways portfolio management is changing and how technology improves portfolio transparency for a unified view of investments, resulting in a consistent source of investment data for intelligent portfolio optimization.
Changing reality of institutional portfolio management
Asset management firms have never had more challenges in gaining the holy grail — the single pane of glass view into the health of their portfolios. And it’s not merely about getting that visibility; it is also doing so at any time of day and getting it instantly instead of having to fire drill to gather information. This, along with the rising cost base and necessity for AI readiness, is why asset management firms regard upgrading technology as an important differentiator in 2026. Diversification is wonderful for portfolios but rough on portfolio management. Gone are the days when diversifying a portfolio meant going stronger in government bonds or money market instruments. Now, non-correlated portfolios include alternatives at scale, private debt, infrastructure, hedge funds, PE, tokenized real-world assets, digital assets, CLOs, and other bespoke private credit structures.
Solving cross-asset convergence
Pooled securities comprised of both private and public investments, such as ETFs, have gained a strong foothold. ETFs now account for about a quarter of open-ended funds AUM, and investor preference for low-cost funds is evident in the majority of AUM being invested in funds with lower expense ratios.ii Managers have been on a quest to solve the public-private asset class convergence riddle from a data and operational perspective. Traditional systems get tripped up when modeling private market data for valuation and pricing, liquidity and market impact, performance models, and client data.
Challenges abound across departments. For example, it becomes complicated to synchronize valuation cycles between liquid and illiquid assets to produce a unified NAV. No universal standards across public and private markets makes calculating performance especially challenging. Asset class convergence complicates the tracking of public and private investment activity in the same system to create a complete holistic cross-strategy performance snapshot for client portfolios. The answer lies in infrastructure that facilitates centralized holdings management, a single source of data truth from which managers can see clearly where they stand.
Retail access, evergreen funds, and operational scale
2026 investment trends and distribution approaches center on evergreen funds, interval vehicles, separately managed accounts (SMA), model portfolios, and a “second wave of ETF adoption...bringing investor capital to actively managed ETFs.”iii These all have one thing in common: capturing a lucrative new swath of retail investors, many of which are affluent high-net-worth (HNW) individuals, including recipients of the great generational wealth transfer. Another commonality is the increase in alt asset class exposure. HNW investors are wild about alts, keen to reap the enhanced returns from private credit, PE, professional sports, real estate, and fine art.
Many big-name asset managers have launched semi-liquid evergreen funds to cater to these affluent investors. Evergreens have continuous capital raising and redemption features and can have widely diversified portfolios across vintage year, transaction type, industries, manager, asset classes, and geography. Talk about complexity. The influx of millions of retail investors will bring another thorny nuance to harmonizing heterogeneous datasets and valuation methodologies. Firms that leverage operational technology can generate real-time exposure tracking across asset classes, vehicles, and instruments. Thus, they will gain the capacity to drive strategic decisions based on comprehensive information instead of partial insights, or worse, inaccurate P&Ls, positions, or valuations.
Benefits of modern portfolio management platforms
Ideally, firms should have advanced asset management technology and data platforms that future-proof the organization for scaling AUM regardless of the asset class mix, diversified structures, volume of transactional data, and strategy employed. They need the ability to normalize and store data in a consistent format across systems for seamless integration, analysis, and reporting. Just as ideally, firms should not expand by adding salaries or increasing manual workflows.
