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“Alternative investments are no longer alternative,” says Addepar’s Head of Investment Analytics Solutions Rowena Carreon. Once a peripheral allocation for the adventurous investor, private equity, private credit, venture capital, infrastructure and other non-public assets now sit squarely at the center of sophisticated portfolios. For private banks and other enterprise wealth institutions, this transformation brings both opportunity and urgency. Clients are demanding greater access to private markets, but servicing those investments efficiently and at scale requires modern data infrastructure and technology.
Rowena recently sat down with WestCap Partner and Head of Asset Management Jaime Hildreth at the Addepar Enterprise Summit. They discussed the expanding role of alts in portfolio construction, the challenges of managing these assets and their potential for outsized returns. Here’s what we learned.
WestCap Partner and Head of Asset Management, Jaime Hildreth with Addepar’s Head of Investment Analytics Solutions, Rowena Carreon
Alternatives are now a core portfolio component
Across the high- and ultra-high-net-worth (HNW/UHNW) spectrum, alternatives have become a defining feature of portfolio construction. Recent studies show allocations averaging 35–40% of total assets, reflecting both the search for alpha and the reality that value creation is increasingly occurring in private markets.
According to Preqin’s The Future of Alternatives report, analysts predict a 2x growth in alternative assets under management, on course to exceed $30T by the year 2030.1 Fidelity reports 86% of institutional investors allocate to alts, with an average allocation of 23%.2
This structural reallocation underscores a simple truth: alternatives are no longer a niche asset. They are foundational to modern wealth management. The question is how efficiently advisors can support them given their clients' growing interest.
Friction is the primary hurdle to scaling in alternative investments
Despite their central role in asset allocation, alternatives remain operationally complex. Rowena and Jaime termed this complexity “friction points” — the result of manual workflows, disparate documentation and a lack of reporting standards.
Friction can be caused by a number of factors such as the paperwork needed for subscribing to a fund, delays in capital calls and distributions, and a lack of transparency and timely reporting. GGeneral partners (GPs) and fund administrators often have inconsistent reporting methods, which can lead to months-long delays in providing performance reports to investors.
When performance data does arrive, it’s often in multiple formats — from PDFs and portals, to emails and spreadsheets — introducing potential delays, errors and compliance risks. All of this friction affects more than efficiency; it directly impacts the client experience. Without timely, accurate data, relationship managers can’t easily show how alternatives contribute to a client’s total portfolio or liquidity picture. In an environment where trust is data-driven, that’s a strategic vulnerability.
Technology as the foundation for transparency and scale
Addepar’s platform was built to centralize and standardize complex portfolio information across every asset class, including private markets. Of the $8 trillion in assets managed on Addepar, roughly 40% represent alternative investments. This gives us one of the world’s most comprehensive, anonymized datasets of private market holdings — spanning vintages, managers, sectors and structures.
For private banks, this level of intelligence is transformative. It enables total portfolio visibility, with private assets analyzed alongside public holdings in one consistent framework. It reduces reporting lag and reconciliation errors. And it empowers advisors and investment teams to operate from a single, trusted source of truth.
Our growing suite of tools help to further unlock the value of private market data — from data ingestion, validation and verification with Addepar Alts Data Management, to Private Fund Benchmarks that enable critical performance and manager evaluation. Addepar Navigator projects cash flows for commitment-based funds, so investors can adjust strategies to support cash flow management and avoid cash drag. Together, these capabilities eliminate multiple friction points that have historically slowed down private-market investing — and they do so at enterprise scale.
AI is an accelerator, not a replacement for expertise
Our experts discussed artificial intelligence as a powerful enabler for enterprise firms, particularly in the data-heavy world of alternatives. While AI can accelerate data synthesis and research, human expertise and judgment remain indispensable, particularly for assessing qualitative factors in private investments.
WestCap’s Jaime Hildreth emphasized, humans excel at assessing the "softer skills" like a founder’s character or a management team's competence. A human overlay is still critical in these cases. The most successful firms are combining AI-driven scale with advisor-led discernment and decision-making
Advisors still generate real alpha
Technology may power transparency, but advisors deliver alpha. Panelists Jaime and Rowena referenced a recent academic study, “Democratizing Private Markets: Private Equity Performance of Individual Investors,” which offers the first systematic analysis of private equity (PE) outcomes among individual investors using Addepar’s extensive and proprietary dataset. The research includes a case study of advisors investing in private funds across multiple vintages over several years, demonstrating an incremental 13% outperformance for their clients. The findings underscore the meaningful value that professional guidance can deliver in navigating this complex asset class.3
When advisors can access timely, structured data through a platform like Addepar, their expertise compounds. Advisors can provide actionable insights faster, anticipate liquidity needs and demonstrate the tangible contribution of alternatives to overall portfolio performance.
The future relies on unified data, exceptional client experience
Private markets are expanding rapidly, even into retail investing, and so is the demand for institutional-grade transparency. The next frontier for enterprise firms isn’t access to private markets, it’s efficiency when operating in them. Firms that can deliver accurate, on-demand data across every asset class will own the client relationship of the future.
By centralizing data, automating manual processes and enriching insights, Addepar helps enterprises streamline their operations and elevate the client experience. The result is a more transparent, scalable and intelligent approach to wealth management, one built for a world where alternatives are not just part of the story, but the centerpiece.
Learn more about how Addepar supports alternative investments for enterprises.
References
Future of Alternatives 2029, Preqin, 2024.
Fidelity Institutional Investor Innovation Study, May 2022.
Democratizing Private Markets: Private Equity Performance of Individual Investors, 2025