Key Takeaways
- • Mercer, S&P Global and Cambridge Associates are collaborating on a clearinghouse approach that centralizes, validates and normalizes fund and asset data for private markets, with a view to a future "one-to-many" reporting structure.
- • Mercer argues that private markets are the least well-served asset class by data, even as institutional allocations to private equity, private credit and other private assets continue to grow.
- • The proposed solution centers on aggregating and standardizing General Partner (GP) data, which is typically the most current and granular information investors seek, while anonymizing outputs to address GP reluctance to share proprietary information.
- • Limited Partners (LPs) face partial visibility into portfolio risk, performance and liquidity when public and private datasets cannot be unified, a gap Mercer says traditional systems were not built to close.
- • Mercer's Critical Thinking podcast featured specialists from Mercer, S&P Global and Cambridge Associates discussing the widening gap between capital flows and data infrastructure.
Summary
As institutional capital continues to flow into private markets, the supporting data infrastructure has struggled to keep pace, according to Mercer. The firm says the investor challenge has shifted from access to opportunities toward access to high-quality, decision-ready data. Public markets benefit from deep pools of standardized data that support benchmarking, risk modeling and comparison, whereas private markets lack equivalent guarantees, and investors often receive data that is delayed, incomplete or inconsistent.
The problem is compounded as portfolios diversify and as new fund structures, GP-led secondaries and continuation vehicles add complexity. Mercer notes that without reliable cross-market data covering both public and private exposures, Limited Partners may make decisions with only a partial understanding of their portfolios' risk, performance or liquidity. Gaps between public and private datasets also prevent investors from unifying performance metrics or automating reporting.
Mercer proposes a collaborative model in which like-minded firms aggregate and standardize GP data. The firm acknowledges that most market participants are reluctant to share information, creating data silos, and suggests anonymized data outputs as a way to protect commercial advantage while still providing shared insights. Mercer says peer comparison from the perspective of private market funds is currently limited to headline performance and track records, and that greater transparency could help high-performing GPs demonstrate differentiated results while giving others feedback on relative positioning.
Mercer is working with S&P Global and Cambridge Associates on a clearinghouse approach in which fund and asset data is centralized, validated and normalized. The initiative is intended to eventually support a "one-to-many" reporting structure. Specialists from the three firms discussed these issues on Mercer's Critical Thinking podcast. Note that the original article could not be fully retrieved, so this summary relies on the publisher's web content and supplemental excerpts.
The problem is compounded as portfolios diversify and as new fund structures, GP-led secondaries and continuation vehicles add complexity. Mercer notes that without reliable cross-market data covering both public and private exposures, Limited Partners may make decisions with only a partial understanding of their portfolios' risk, performance or liquidity. Gaps between public and private datasets also prevent investors from unifying performance metrics or automating reporting.
Mercer proposes a collaborative model in which like-minded firms aggregate and standardize GP data. The firm acknowledges that most market participants are reluctant to share information, creating data silos, and suggests anonymized data outputs as a way to protect commercial advantage while still providing shared insights. Mercer says peer comparison from the perspective of private market funds is currently limited to headline performance and track records, and that greater transparency could help high-performing GPs demonstrate differentiated results while giving others feedback on relative positioning.
Mercer is working with S&P Global and Cambridge Associates on a clearinghouse approach in which fund and asset data is centralized, validated and normalized. The initiative is intended to eventually support a "one-to-many" reporting structure. Specialists from the three firms discussed these issues on Mercer's Critical Thinking podcast. Note that the original article could not be fully retrieved, so this summary relies on the publisher's web content and supplemental excerpts.
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