Private market tech stacks are almost as complex as today’s capital markets. For those portfolio and fund managers mired in a tech nightmare, decisions on build vs. buy, point solutions or end-to-end, and now vs. later are just a few of the stressors. Some firms that still run legacy operational technology run into problems when it comes to slogging workflows, integration incompatibility, unsynchronized data, and other issues that ultimately cause problems in scaling AUM.

Firms running fragmented data infrastructure encounter problems dealing with the colossal volumes of new data flooding into and out of their systems, failing to keep their information ingestible, auditable, reportable, and accessible to teams who need it. Piecemeal technology acquisition leads to fractured workflows, data silos, and rising integration costs, ultimately slowing growth and increasing risk. Let’s examine how private markets players can alleviate and solve these ongoing struggles.

Private market tech priorities

Investors are not bashful about increasing private market exposure, from pension funds and insurance companies to endowments and foundations, for whom allocations to private debt (+24%) and private equity (+26%) are expected to see the largest net increases over the next three years, extending a three-year trend of rising private exposure.ⁱManagers dealing in alternatives have expressed two distinct priorities: unified data platforms and automated private credit loan workflows.

Firms are urgently seeking data infrastructure that seamlessly shuttles data from different systems into one golden source, rather than routing out to different places. With a centralized data platform, they can accelerate and modernize LP reporting, portfolio analytics, and performance computation, with easily accessible data, all in one place. Firms have a handful of approaches to data modernization at their disposal. Firstly, they can focus on bringing existing data together to create a single source of truth for performance computation, even if they are not replacing their current tech stack. Alternatively, if unable to rip out their existing tech stack, firms can easily replace existing operational data sets, such as current accounting or trade booking systems.

Perils of piecemeal technology stacks

If using piecemeal technology solutions, where more handoffs occur between systems, the process is more prone to error. For example, an operations team uses a system where they generate an output, and that output then must feed into an investment accounting system rather than seamlessly integrating or flowing through one end-to-end system. This necessitates a complex, time-consuming data mapping exercise, as any change in one system requires changes across the entire layer. It's very hard to get that all-important consolidated view. Visibility into portfolios is a premier capability in a time when investment strategies are increasingly complicated with cross-asset class strategies and a variety of innovative vehicles and structures at play. This is particularly critical when dealing with the nuances of private credit strategies.

Speeding over private credit roadblocks

In private loan workflows, credit agreements often exist in PDFs. Someone must read the PDF, set up security, and book transactions such as drawdowns, interest accruals, payments, etc. Firms run their workflows aground when trying to scale securitized pools of loans that come with 1,000 or 10,000 PDFs arriving monthly. Credit research analysts and structured credit teams spend countless hours processing those PDFs, entering them into loan accounting systems, generating the reports, and releasing LP statements.

The explosion of continuation vehicles, evergreen funds, and secondary funds offers yet another complicated curveball to workflows, each bringing distinguishing factors in investment lifecycle events, valuations, and liquidity. Private debt attracted $16.1 billion of secondary capital during Q1-Q3 of 2025, compared with a meager $1.7 billion raised for the full-year 2024.ⁱⁱ Piecemeal private market tech stacks will not suffice for firms in urgent need of data-based workflow automation, harmonization of datasets from disparate sources, and real-time valuations.