Cerulli projects $2 trillion rise in advisor private-capital books

Cerulli Associates projects that financial advisors will add $2 trillion to their private-capital books. The firm's time frame is the next five years. Advisors already hold $2.2 trillion. The forecast, published in Cerulli's latest private markets report and covered by InvestmentNews, puts interval funds at the center of that growth. It lands in a market already arguing about whether semi-liquid structures deserve the inflows they are getting.

Cerulli counts $132 billion in interval funds at year-end 2025. That total spans 147 products and is up sharply from prior years. Tender offer funds are growing too. Credit strategies are driving the interval-fund category, equity strategies are lifting tender offer funds, and non-traded BDCs have cooled after a rapid run. In the accompanying survey, 93% of asset managers point to wider access to alternatives as a significant driver of industry growth. The survey asked about the next three years. Most of the same managers also cite income demand and advisors' need to demonstrate value-add.

The independent RIA is the channel that matters. The asset managers Cerulli polled place independent RIAs in their top five distribution opportunities. The share is 93%, the highest of any channel, likely because the channel offers the most streamlined access to products. The structure explains the appeal. Interval funds lack the performance fees and embedded commissions of older non-traded vehicles, which gives RIAs a cleaner fee table and a simpler suitability conversation.

Brookfield Asset Management's Alts Institute has fielded its own survey pointing the same way. Fifty-seven percent of advisors say they plan to increase their use of evergreen funds. The survey's time frame is the next two years. Roughly two-thirds favor self-funding or reinvestment to expand client allocations in the category. That figure suggests the next tranche of growth does not need to come from new money alone. Existing allocations, reinvested, can carry a good part of the $2 trillion. In practice, this rewrites the sales pitch for sponsors. The priority shifts from finding new RIAs to deepening the relationships already in place.

Cerulli's forecast arrives in the middle of a live stress test for the category. Apollo has set a $150 billion private-wealth fundraising target. Semi-liquid strategies sit at its core. The firm expects the wealth channel to supply half of its annual third-party fundraising. The target year is 2029. BCRED, the Blackstone credit fund that helped define interval-fund distribution, has now posted four consecutive quarterly NAV declines. Those facts sit in tension. Sponsors are scaling distribution while underlying returns look less flattering than in the launch years.

The suitability question runs underneath all of this. An interval fund offers a quarterly redemption window, but the assets behind it can take years to exit. When flows turn, the fund is the seller of last resort. Cerulli's report does not resolve that tension. It measures demand and notes that scaling access will depend on collaboration rather than competition. In plain terms, the burden of redemption discipline falls on everyone who touches the product.

The $2 trillion projection is a wager that the interval fund's quarterly liquidity promise holds up through a full cycle. At $132 billion, interval funds are a small but fast-growing slice of the advisor private-capital book. The wider book stands at $2.2 trillion. The next five years will show whether advisors treat semi-liquid funds as permanent fixtures or as fair-weather allocations that thin out when redemption pressure shows up.