Major asset managers revolutionise wealth portfolios with integrated private and public market solutions

In a clear reflection of the evolving wealth management landscape, major asset managers are forging innovative partnerships to seamlessly integrate public and private market exposures within unified model portfolios. This trend represents a significant shift towards providing financial advisers and their clients with streamlined access to private market assets, historically considered complex and less accessible to individual investors.

In March 2025, BlackRock spearheaded this movement by announcing a partnership with alternative investment marketplace iCapital and the tech-driven asset management platform GeoWealth. The collaboration introduced a customisable public-private model portfolio, designed to offer exposure across both private and public market assets through a unified managed account (UMA). According to Jaime Magyera, head of BlackRock’s US wealth advisory business, this launch marks “a significant step forward, helping advisers allocate across both public and private markets all in one unified, professionally managed portfolio.” Leveraging GeoWealth’s advanced UMA technology and iCapital’s platform, the solution features streamlined administration and custodial integration, simplifying the portfolio management process for advisers.

This partnership was followed three months later by another initiative from BlackRock, this time with Great Gray Trust Company, a provider of trustee and administrative services for collective investment trusts (CITs). Together, they developed a custom glide path to facilitate allocations across public and private markets, further enhancing advisers’ capacity to deliver diversified portfolios that match clients’ risk tolerances and liquidity preferences.

iCapital’s chairman and chief executive, Lawrence Calcano, highlights a pivotal challenge the industry faces: many advisers and investors are relatively new to private market asset classes. “Being able to invest in a model portfolio, either made up entirely of alternatives or some combination of alternatives and liquid investments, could make it much easier for advisers to offer clients portfolios that meet their risk and illiquidity tolerance,” he explained. Calcano emphasises the importance of technology, noting that advisers can manage the entire model in one workflow, subscribing to underlying accounts seamlessly.

Goldman Sachs has similarly embraced this integrated approach. In a strategic collaboration with T. Rowe Price announced in September 2025, the pair aims to deliver diversified public and private markets solutions tailored for retirement and wealth investors. This partnership seeks to serve financial advisors and their clients by offering a suite of co-branded model portfolios that incorporate mutual funds, ETFs, separately managed accounts (SMAs), direct indexing, and private market vehicles. Greg Wilson, head of retirement at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, asserts that blending these asset classes within a diversified portfolio “can deliver outperformance” and tailor investments to clients’ objectives and risk profiles. He points out the widening gap in exposure to high-growth companies, which remain private longer, indicating that exclusive reliance on public markets limits investor participation in the broader economy’s growth.

Goldman Sachs has also developed proprietary technological capabilities designed to provide liquidity across portfolios that include private assets, addressing a longstanding friction point for investors concerned with illiquidity. According to Wilson, new private market CITs and multi-manager solutions now allocate 10-20 percent to private markets, levels aligned with the long-term horizons typical of retirement investors, while maintaining liquidity sleeves to meet daily liquidity needs. This structure allows for professional management of private market exposures alongside publicly traded securities, making alternatives more accessible to a broader client base.

Industry observers like Eric Muller, CEO for business development companies at Oak Hill Advisors, foresee further innovation in products that combine liquid and private market sleeves within single wrappers, easing integration into mainstream wealth portfolios. “We are going to see more products that combine liquid market and private markets sleeves within a single wrapper,” he said, anticipating easier consumption of such models by wealth advisers.

These developments are clearly part of a broader trend towards the democratisation of alternative investments, removing many of the frictions that previously complicated incorporation of private assets into retail and mass affluent portfolios. Model portfolios combining public and private allocations are resolving challenges related to liquidity, transparency, and administrative complexity.

BlackRock projects significant growth in this space, expecting its managed model portfolios to roughly double in assets over the next four years, from $5 trillion currently to a $10 trillion business. Its custom models segment, which now accounts for $50 billion in new assets over the past five years, is the firm’s fastest-growing area. This trajectory underscores advisers’ growing appetite to incorporate private markets into their client solutions.

Liquidity, transparency, and professional management remain crucial. Wilson advises investors to “size their allocations to private markets so that they can treat them as if they were conventional alternative investments, largely illiquid.” Professional management helps evaluate managers’ track records and aligns portfolios with individual needs, reducing risk and complexity for investors.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs is aggressively expanding its private credit platform as part of its broader private market strategy, seeking to grow its portfolio from $130 billion to $300 billion within five years. This ambition reflects a recognition of private credit’s potential for yield and diversification in investors’ portfolios, particularly in an environment where public market alternatives may offer limited return prospects.

Overall, the growing integration of public and private market allocations within single, technology-enabled portfolios represents a promising evolution in wealth management. This innovation helps advisers better serve clients by offering diversified, bespoke investment solutions that leverage the full spectrum of asset classes, enhanced by advanced portfolio management and reporting tools. As private market exposure becomes more accessible and administratively manageable, investors of varying profiles can anticipate broader participation in alternative assets, a development poised to reshape portfolio construction norms across the wealth management industry in the coming decade.