Private Markets in the Spotlight: Rethinking Investor Communications in an Age of Democratisation

Private Markets in the Spotlight: Rethinking Investor Communications in an Age of Democratisation

September 2025

By Kainoa Blaisdell, Lead Sandpiper Financial – Asia Pacific. Based in Singapore, Kainoa leads high-impact stakeholder engagements across investor relations, special situations, and transactions. With deep expertise in the public and private markets, he has advised clients through complex capital market events including M&A, shareholder activism, fundraising, restructurings and crisis scenarios.

Private Markets Are No Longer Private

Private markets are no longer the exclusive playground of institutions and the ultra-wealthy. Once tightly held territory has begun to open with increasing momentum. Across asset classes, new sources of capital flows are expanding as high-net-worth individuals, digital wealth platforms, and retail investors step more meaningfully into the fold.

Against this backdrop, innovative structures have emerged to meet demand and fill the product gap. A day doesn’t go by without headlines about a new retail-friendly product launch hitting the market. A continuous flow of new evergreen funds, flexible feeder vehicles, semi-liquid offerings, and even tokenised products means individual investors are spoiled for choice when considering how to best gain exposure to private market strategies in portfolios. 

This growth story isn’t just about effective product design and innovation. It’s about a fundamental reshaping of expectations that fund managers may not be prepared for. Investors, particularly those arriving through newly democratised channels, are financially savvy and asking sharper questions. They want frequent and proactive two-way communications. They want plain-language answers. And they want to understand not just how returns are made, but how value is created, protected, and realised.

At SuperReturn Asia 2025, this was hard to miss. The formal agenda covered familiar ground and themes, but much of the more meaningful conversations happened offstage. In private, GPs spoke candidly of the challenges of adapting to the democratisation of the industry. Many are realising that their capital base is diversifying faster than their strategic communications and engagement strategies, and that’s starting to become a problem.

Asia Pacific On the Frontline

Retail demand for private markets has been rising for years. The appeal is easy to understand, as investors search for new return drivers and better diversification. The Deloitte Center for Financial Services estimates that retail allocations to private markets could surge from USD 80 billion today to over USD 2.4 trillion by 2030 in the US, and more than triple in the EU to EUR 3.3 trillion.

Asia Pacific has been at the forefront of this trend as wealth levels around the region rise and asset managers continue to flock to the market. According to a survey by State Street, 70% of asset managers in Singapore expect at least half of future fundraising will come via semi-liquid, retail-style private market products within the next one to two years – higher than 56% of their peers globally. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has responded with regulatory proposals to open the door wider – most notably through its recently proposed Long-Term Investment Fund (“LIF”) framework, which would allow retail investors to access private equity, credit, and infrastructure vehicles.

Other markets are moving in lockstep too. In Australia, regulators are under continued pressure to allow individual investors greater exposure to private markets in retirement vehicles, and officials are working with industry participants to identify a way forward. The Japanese government has expanded the Nippon Individual Savings Account (NISA), a tax-exempt investment scheme for individuals, to enable investment trusts to include unlisted shares in portfolios – paving the way for broader retail access to alternative assets. Hong Kong has seen the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) create a pathway for listing closed-ended alternative asset funds, generating notable interest from local private market players and global managers with funds listed abroad.

With Asia Pacific’s asset management industry expected to continue leading other regions on net inflows, the world’s largest managers are moving to establish strategic partnerships and bolster distribution touchpoints for their alternative investment product suites. A recent example is Hamilton Lane, which rolled out a semi-liquid private equity strategy for the wealth market in July, with UOB Private Bank, Southeast Asia’s third-largest bank by total assets, the first to distribute the Asia-focused evergreen structure.

This newfound scale is undoubtedly exciting, but with it comes additional complexity and risks for fund managers to navigate.

A New Era of Scrutiny, Storytelling, and Discoverability

The private market industry is entering a new era defined not just by capital flows but by scrutiny, public perceptions, and digital discoverability.

For years, private markets thrived behind the scenes, backed by long-term allocators who understood each private market asset class, shielded from public examination and criticism. These days are gone. As access expands into the mainstream, so too has public attention and accountability.

Headlines and public discourse on digital platforms are quick to call out missteps, explore difficult themes, and challenge industry claims. Broad awareness of private markets means fund managers risk losing control of their reputations in an “always-on” cross-examination if they are not careful, becoming passive observers to global information flows on the development of their corporate story.

Part of the problem is a communication gap that is not being adequately addressed. On the one hand, an increasingly complex and crowded investment landscape, on the other hand, a growing universe of stakeholders who may not have the same institutional “muscle memory” or technical fluency as traditional gatekeepers and allocators.

Failure to take a hands-on approach to shaping the contextual environment your firm operates in and the steps necessary to close the communications gap will mean accepting the potential risks of being misunderstood or, worse yet, misrepresented at a time when forgiveness and leeway are fleeting.

What the Best Communicators Are Getting Right

In our conversations with GPs and LPs, it is clear that despite the complexity and public scrutiny facing the industry, a handful of firms are rising to the occasion, proving that thoughtful communications strategies can be a source of value creation for portfolios and competitive advantage among peers.

The most forward-thinking GPs are not just reacting to the demands of a broader investor base, they are proactively adapting how, what, and where they communicate to align with the realities of tomorrow.

Here’s what they’re getting right, and some lessons shared:

Tailoring content by investor segment: Firms are moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach to investor communications and materials. This segmentation extends through to the tone, channels, and cadence of engagement, ensuring each stakeholder group feels seen, informed, and empowered.

Educating key audiences, not just updating them: Investor sophistication and understanding vary widely. Instead of assuming familiarity, leading communicators are investing in educational content and campaigns that walk investors through strategies in plain language and informative visuals.

Refining and owning their corporate narrative: GPs are starting to recognise the importance of developing and owning their corporate narrative to position themselves competitively among peers and in the eyes of investors. Those who do this best take a systematic approach to narrative refinement and ownership to differentiate themselves across the investment lifecycle.

Preparing for AI-led search and discoverability: An underappreciated shift in investor behaviour is how investors and advisors “find” and form views about managers. While corporate websites, social media, and other digital platforms are still relatively new for many GPs, these are already giving way to Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, and Perplexity in research and information gathering. Just as SEO is vital for visibility on Google, GPs must consider AI discoverability as core to their communications strategy.

Enhancing communication infrastructures: As GPs expand access via digital platforms, wealth managers, and feeder structures, communications infrastructure and systems must keep pace. Leading firms are investing in scalable content and thought-leadership platforms to augment internal capabilities. Some GPs are even building out dedicated wealth communications teams to ensure the right messages, materials, and support are provided to these channel partners.

Reputation Is Capital

In today’s private market environment, performance track records remain essential, but reputation increasingly sets firms apart. Trust has always been the true currency of this industry, especially so here in Asia Pacific, where relationships and networks run deep. It’s what underpins allocations, builds loyalty, deepens investment pipelines, and sustains a firm across market cycles.

While building and managing reputation is not easy, there is good news. Proactive investment into reputational equity compounds over time. Every touchpoint is an opportunity to reinforce alignment, build confidence, and differentiate. Communications efforts must be treated with the same rigour as other investment and operational decisions within a firm.

Reputation is a form of capital to be managed, empowering firms to future-proof their brands and deepen stakeholder relationships in ways that create competitive advantage.

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