Alternative investments are moving firmly into the mainstream of client portfolios, with U.S.-based financial advisors leading a global shift toward deeper private market allocations, according to iCapital’s 2025 Global Advisor Survey. Conducted in Q1 2025, the survey captures insights from more than 600 advisors across the U.S., Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), and the Middle East and reflects a decisive phase shift in how financial advisors globally — and U.S. advisors most aggressively — are approaching alternative investments.  

What was once positioned primarily as a diversifier or niche allocation is now rapidly transforming into a core growth engine within client portfolios. This evolution carries significant implications across product design, platform infrastructure, and advisor enablement. 

Alternatives Are No Longer Optional — They’re Becoming Structural 

The near-universal intent (96%) among advisors to maintain or increase alternative allocations over the next 12 months signals full-scale institutionalization across wealth management. This is no longer limited to ultra-high-net-worth or institutional clients; mass-affluent and high-net-worth investors are increasingly being introduced to private markets as part of standard portfolio construction. 

What’s most notable is the shift in advisor psychology: alternatives are increasingly seen as a direct contributor to return generation, not simply as portfolio ballast. This reflects the growing realization that public market correlations, shrinking diversification benefits, and muted forward-looking public equity returns have made private markets central to long-term client outcomes. 

Private Credit and Evergreen Structures Are Emerging as Key Drivers of Growth 

While private equity remains broadly adopted (66%), private credit (56%) is rapidly closing the gap, especially in the U.S. (44%) and APAC markets (71%). The combination of yield scarcity, income stability, and growing credit dislocation is positioning private credit as a versatile solution across client tiers. 

Simultaneously, evergreen structures — once considered niche — are gaining mainstream traction. The fact that 77% of advisors expect evergreens to comprise at least 10% of client portfolios, with U.S. advisors projecting 11% to 15% exposure within two years, reflects a strong desire for products that blend institutional access with investor-friendly liquidity and operational simplicity. 

This shift toward evergreen structures is fundamentally altering product development roadmaps for asset managers, opening the door to scalable wealth channels previously limited by traditional closed-end drawdown models. 

Operational Infrastructure Is Now the Bottleneck to Scaling Adoption 

Even as comfort with private market investing grows, advisors face growing complexity at the portfolio level. Key operational friction points are no longer purely educational — they are technical and process-driven: Liquidity risk assessment remains opaque for most advisors (55% struggle to measure it reliably). Portfolio-level risk integration is still underdeveloped for multi-asset private market exposures, with 53% citing challenges in fully understanding how alternatives impact total portfolio risk and return profiles. 

Advisors need full visibility across liquid and illiquid holdings to maintain client confidence. This reinforces that technology and platform integration are becoming strategic gatekeepers for the next phase of alternatives adoption. 

Wealth Platforms Face a Strategic Imperative 

For platforms, the survey signals an unmistakable mandate: Product shelf breadth is no longer enough; true scalability requires embedded technology that integrates onboarding, performance, reporting, liquidity monitoring, compliance, and portfolio construction tools. Advisor enablement must evolve from education to fully embedded, tech-driven investment frameworks that allow advisors to construct complex client solutions confidently. 

Data transparency and real-time integration will become a key differentiator for wealth platforms competing for advisor engagement. The advisor-led expansion into private markets is not a temporary rotation; it represents a structural redefinition of the wealth management value proposition. Platforms that meet the dual demand for expanded private market access and sophisticated operational integration will not only capture greater advisor wallet share — they will shape the next generation of wealth platform architecture.