As private markets become an increasingly attractive destination for capital, LPs have upped their allocations in tandem, gaining sophistication along the way. Today, many allocators have developed robust multi-strategy private portfolios and adopted co- and direct investing strategies that blur the traditional lines of LP and GP.
However, this private market push has been accompanied by increasing operational complexity. LPs often struggle to piece together a holistic, real-time view of performance, aggregate exposures across different dimensions, and understand the underlying drivers of returns to inform future decision making. The challenge is even more pronounced for those pursuing co- and direct investing, which require significant resources for valuations, due diligence, and board-level participation.
To explore how LPs are addressing these challenges, we hosted a webinar with Alpha Alternatives and Jeremy Weisberg, Managing Director of Secondaries at CPP Investments, (one of the most sophisticated Canadian pensions) discussing current market conditions, the operational complexity of private market programs, and how data and technology can help LPs gain the visibility they need to manage their private portfolios effectively.
Allocators have been navigating a complex asset allocation environment in recent years. However, moving into 2025, panelists echoed the optimistic sentiment taking hold. While geopolitical and policy uncertainty continue to influence decision-making, LPs see a “light at the end of the tunnel.”
Where are investors finding the most compelling opportunities in private markets moving into this year? Panelists weighed in on some areas generating excitement among investors:
Panelists also emphasized the growing importance of relationships in today’s investment environment. Investors want to back managers they see as thought partners — people they trust and share a strategic vision with.
Panelists noted that broadly, LPs remain bullish on private markets, increasing allocations and adopting more sophisticated strategies. However, this growth has also introduced greater operational complexity.
For example, despite having access to vast amounts of private market data, most LPs struggle to harness its full potential. Quarterly reports, partnership financials, and capital accounts arrive in disparate PDFs, Excel files, and emails — unstructured and difficult to extract, aggregate, and analyze efficiently.
This challenge is compounded by the diverse reporting standards across asset classes, each with unique data points and reporting timelines. For multi-strategy LPs, consolidating information from fund, direct, secondaries, and co-investments – not to mention private credit, GP stakes, and other newly popular strategies – into a single portfolio view remains a major hurdle.
Further, the operational impacts of these data silos and manual processes cannot be understated. For one, the bottlenecks in decision-making are significant. Pricing of a secondary transaction for example, requires both accuracy and speed to be successful.
Co-investment decisions, too, demand real-time sector exposure assessments and a completely different diligence process from making a primary fund commitment. Manually compiling fragmented data for these processes (among many others) imposes a notable drag on effective decision-making.
Internal collaboration also suffers. Providing team members with the source documentation for an analysis or model often entails hunting down reports stored in disparate places or frustrating examination of restatements and data conflicts. Reporting to stakeholders is also cumbersome, with manual data aggregation and cross-team collaboration also raising the risk of errors.
How can technology help? Panelists highlighted key ways LPs are leveraging Chronograph to address these challenges:
First and foremost, Chronograph LP consolidates data across private capital strategies, giving allocators a centralized view of both granular and high-level portfolio insights. Further, with all private capital data centralized, Chronograph’s click-to-audit functionality enables LPs to instantly trace any data point back to its source, delivering much-needed transparency and efficiency.
The more insights LPs can extract across their portfolios, the stronger their decision-making becomes. Panelists emphasized that centralizing data elevates it from a solely functional tool to a strategic asset, helping LPs identify trends and enhance portfolio management.
Some key examples discussed include:
This pattern recognition and real-time visibility into portfolio trends ultimately empower better decision-making. As one panelist noted, market conditions give a ‘different flavor or read every 6–12 months’ and having access to timely insights enables teams to stay nimble and make the best possible relative value decisions.
This is especially powerful for LPs adopting a “one fund” mindset or Total Portfolio Approach, an asset allocation strategy gaining traction among institutional investors. Under this model, every marginal dollar must compete across the portfolio, flowing into the most attractive opportunities at any given moment.
The panelist emphasized that executing this strategy effectively requires breaking down silos and leveraging real-time data to ‘triangulate’ across the portfolio and identify the best opportunities. For example, by having all data accessible across teams, they empower their credit team or public equity team members with deep sector insights to give their perspective on a specific PE deal.
Panelists highlighted the evolution of private market products, citing single-asset continuation vehicles as a key secondary innovation. They emphasized the need for scalable technology, noting Chronograph’s data model and entity structures are designed to mirror core market relationships and adapt alongside industry advancements, unlocking deeper insights.
Panelists also emphasized that while today’s tech ecosystem offers LPs powerful tools, successful adoption hinges on top-down alignment and leadership driving the right culture and change management. Several best practices were cited:
As LPs continue to adopt sophisticated private market strategies, Chronograph’s next-generation portfolio monitoring software paired with Alpha Alternatives’ robust experience in data strategy design offers a helpful resource for setting data initiatives up for success. Together, we’ve partnered on dozens of client engagements globally to streamline investment workflows, create sophisticated reporting outputs, and help investors leverage data as a strategic asset.
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