Private Markets Have Momentum. But How Will We Harness It?

I’ve been at Kroll for nearly six months, and I’m still learning something new about this fantastic firm every day. I hadn’t expected or planned to join Kroll. The truth is that I failed at retirement.

I stepped back from the day-to-day leadership of several businesses in 2021, joined a number of boards, spent some time investing and focused on philanthropy. I had a pretty good life. Then the opportunity to join Kroll as Executive Chairman came to me.

I’ve spent roughly four decades advising companies, investing in them, running them and helping them grow. Over that time, I’ve learned to recognize market opportunity, and what initially attracted me to Kroll was the tremendous momentum behind the markets it serves. It’s always more fun to be working in a growth business with market momentum than fighting for share in a shrinking market. But I hadn’t fully appreciated the depth of Kroll’s capabilities.

Having led global advisory firms, I know success in today’s world depends on three things: expertise, data and technology. Of those, expertise is by far the hardest to build.

You can buy technology and data, but deep expertise, people who know what matters and what doesn’t, takes years, even decades, to develop.

Kroll has spent decades building expertise and providing pragmatic advice across private and adjacent markets. Combined with proprietary data and increasingly powerful analytics, it allows Kroll to turn complexity into actionable insight. More importantly, it gives our clients peace of mind, knowing that our work is accurate, stress-tested and will stand up to scrutiny.

We started our annual Private Markets Conference 20 years ago, when private markets were still largely unproven and untested as an institutional asset class. In 2006, one of the fundamental questions was whether nonbank lenders could become a credible, permanent alternative to banks.

Kroll recognized the need to bring together the people working in these markets to share practical guidance and help clients navigate that uncertainty. Twenty years later, that purpose remains relevant, although the questions facing the industry have changed considerably.

Private markets have moved firmly into the mainstream, and the focus has shifted from questioning their longevity to assessing whether the infrastructure supporting them has kept pace with their success.

What was once overwhelmingly institutional is opening up to a much broader investor base. Assets traditionally held in closed-end structures are increasingly expected to offer different forms of access and liquidity. With that growth comes a more complicated operating environment, bringing new demands around valuation, governance, transparency and regulation.

Expanding access to private assets is not simply a matter of launching another fund. Different structures bring different investor expectations and operating requirements. Greater liquidity introduces additional considerations around valuation and governance, while longer holding periods create new challenges for managers seeking a path to realization. And as regulators pay closer attention, firms must find ways to apply increasingly complex requirements pragmatically while continuing to run their businesses effectively.

These are exactly the kinds of questions Kroll helps clients answer.

Today, we’re recognized as the world’s largest independent valuer of illiquid assets and the global leader by number of fairness opinions. Hundreds of our analysts conduct thousands of private asset valuation engagements every year, producing conclusions that stand up to scrutiny from investors, regulators, auditors and boards.

One of the things that impressed me most when I joined Kroll was the extraordinary amount of proprietary information generated through the work our people do every day.

Data is essential to understanding what’s happening in a market, validating assumptions, identifying patterns and making better decisions. And Kroll has it at considerable scale.

Our Kroll StepStone Private Credit Benchmarks are built on more than 30,000 loan-level positions representing $1.2 trillion in assets. Our payment-in-kind indicators cover more than 28,000 direct lending instruments, 18,000 deals and 13,000 borrowers, with historical data extending back to 2012.

We’re also seeing clear evidence of how market expectations are evolving. The volume of monthly valuation requests has been increasing by 100% year-over-year, reflecting the growing demand for more frequent information and greater transparency.

But the real opportunity lies in what we do with that information. Combining proprietary data with deep expertise, analytics and increasingly artificial intelligence enables us to identify patterns faster, test assumptions more effectively and turn information into insights that clients can act on.

That’s particularly important as private markets enter another period of significant change. Access, liquidity, technology, regulation and investor expectations are all evolving, at the same time.

Private markets are stable, growing, maturing and have tremendous momentum. For me, the important question is what this momentum means for the decisions businesses need to make next.

At Kroll, we have an exciting opportunity to build on our foundation and momentum. We have expertise that is incredibly difficult to replicate, proprietary data that gives us a distinctive view of the markets we serve and the analytical capabilities to turn that knowledge into better decisions for our clients.

I believe a similarly huge opportunity sits in front of many businesses across private markets. But sustaining momentum will require managers to balance growth with discipline, create liquidity without compromising governance and respond pragmatically to a changing regulatory environment.

Ultimately, success will depend on making the right decisions, supported by the right evidence and expertise, and having confidence that those decisions will stand up to scrutiny. That’s what peace of mind means to me, and it’s what Kroll works to deliver for our clients every day.

Achieving peace of mind is why we brought the private markets industry together 20 years ago, and it’s why these conversations remain so important today. Peace of mind.

To discover more about the topics discussed at the Kroll private markets conference, please visit our perspectives hub: Kroll Private Markets Conference 2026: Perspectives Hub