As Private Markets Scale, Expectations Shift

Private markets have long played a central role in portfolio construction, and their share of the investment landscape continues to grow. With scale comes attention, and this part of the market is now facing the kind of scrutiny that usually follows maturity.

ASIC made that shift explicit in its November 2025 paper, Advancing Australia’s Evolving Capital Markets, which highlights the need for greater visibility and surveillance as the sector expands.

Importantly, ASIC is signalling that stronger disclosure does not need to come at the expense of growth. The intent is to support capital formation while lifting confidence in how private market funds are governed, valued and reported.

That shift is also visible in market sentiment. A CFA Institute survey of investment professionals found that transparency concerns in private markets often centre on valuation reporting, performance measurement and fees. These are not new topics, but they become harder to assess as structures multiply and portfolios become more complex.

Transparency is becoming practical

In public markets, visibility is built into the system. In private markets, it has to be created through operating design.

This matters most in areas where judgement plays a role. Valuations are periodic, liquidity is shaped by structure, and information tends to arrive in reporting cycles rather than continuously. These features support long-term investment strategies, but they also increase the importance of explainability.

When investors or trustees ask questions, they are rarely asking for more volume. They want to understand what changed, what drove it, and whether the approach is being applied consistently over time.

Secondaries are pushing expectations forward

The growth of private market secondaries is one of the clearest signs that expectations around information quality are accelerating.

CAIS Group reported that private market secondaries reached approximately US$103 billion in transaction volume in the first half of 2025, representing growth of around 50 per cent year-on-year.

Secondaries activity accelerates the need for clear, comparable information. When fund exposures are traded, investors need confidence in the underlying reporting. They need to understand what sits behind valuation marks, how performance has been measured, and how portfolios compare across managers and vintages.

In this environment, transparency becomes directly linked to how capital moves.

This shift in market behaviour mirrors the direction ASIC is taking. Its Capital Markets Roadmap points to a more transparent private markets environment, including stronger disclosure expectations and improved valuation and liquidity risk frameworks. Operating models will increasingly be expected to support consistent explanation and oversight as expectations continue to rise.

Valuation is where transparency is tested

Valuation sits at the centre of the private markets transparency conversation because it influences performance reporting, investor confidence and liquidity decisions.

Private market valuations often involve judgement, which needs to be supported by clear governance, consistent methodology and documentation that holds up over time.

In jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom and the United States, valuation governance has already become a focal point as private market activity has deepened. Expectations extend beyond the number itself to how assumptions are set, how conflicts are managed, and how decisions are reviewed and applied consistently across reporting periods.

The UK Financial Conduct Authority’s recent multi-firm review of private market valuation practices reflects this direction, highlighting variation in approaches and lifting expectations around governance, documentation and consistency.

As markets mature, valuation governance becomes one of the clearest indicators of whether operating models are keeping pace with investor and regulatory expectations.

The opportunity ahead

Some elements of ASIC’s roadmap will require consultation and legislative change, so the detail will evolve. Even so, that direction already has practical implications. Operating models that rely heavily on bespoke reporting, manual intervention or informal knowledge are likely to face increasing pressure as expectations rise.

This creates an opportunity for those who respond early.

Strengthening infrastructure now allows flexibility to be preserved, while ensuring decisions can still be explained clearly when they are reviewed later.

Putting it into practice

Wicklow works at the point where transparency becomes operational. We support fund operators with the systems and processes that sit behind investor onboarding, registry, AML/CTF and compliance monitoring, so decisions are easier to evidence and explain.

In practice, this often means tightening parts of the operating model that tend to create friction later. Aligning onboarding, registry and compliance records so they produce consistent outputs across teams and reporting cycles. Ensuring that supporting documentation is complete and accessible when positions are reviewed. Building organisational discipline that allows decisions to be understood without reconstruction.

These design choices are small, but they matter when scrutiny increases.

What the next phase will reward

Private markets will continue to grow. ASIC’s roadmap reflects that reality and signals higher transparency expectations.

Market behaviour is already reinforcing the same direction. The growth of secondaries is one example. Increased attention on valuation governance is another.

The operators that navigate this well will not be the ones producing the longest reports. They will be the ones whose operating model makes decisions easier to explain, and easier to trust.