Liquidity in private markets: the structural and data challenge

J.P. Morgan’s Montse Serra-Janer, Larry Wise and Jason Mirsky explain how structural and data-driven innovation are converging to address the liquidity challenge in private markets

Liquidity has become one of the defining challenges for private markets. Once viewed as a byword for long-term, locked-up capital, the sector has matured into a multi-trillion-dollar asset class central to institutional portfolios. Yet, with an estimated $3.7 trillion of unexited assets still held on balance sheets, the question of how and when investors can access capital is now structural rather than cyclical.

As institutional investors press for greater flexibility and clearer reporting, asset managers are re-examining how they provide liquidity. Secondaries, evergreen funds and new financing structures are expanding the liquidity toolkit, while technology is reshaping the visibility investors have into their portfolios.

A market in transition

Montse Serra-Janer, J.P. Morgan

“The private markets space has become much less linear,” says Montse Serra-Janer, global head of private markets sales, Prime Finance and Securities Services, at J.P. Morgan. “Client needs now depend on the stage of the fund and the type of investor involved. That is changing how liquidity is delivered and managed.”

Recent policy developments have accelerated the shift. In the US, regulatory moves allowing 401(k) pension plans to invest in private markets are widening participation and bringing new inflows. But those inflows are not always aligned with asset creation, creating potential volatility.

“Large movements of capital from public to private markets could push up valuations,” notes Larry Wise, global structuring, head of fund financing at J.P. Morgan. “Where inflows and outflows don’t match, liquidity mismatches emerge – something private markets haven’t historically faced.”

Liquidity through secondaries and financing

For many managers, the secondary market has become a core mechanism for returning capital to investors and managing portfolio balance. “We’ve seen strong growth in secondaries activity as institutional investors rebalance or seek earlier liquidity,” Serra-Janer says. “At the same time, continuation funds allow managers to retain high-conviction assets for longer, creating more flexibility within existing fund structures.”

Larry Wise, J.P. Morgan

Wise describes J.P. Morgan’s approach as building an “ecosystem” that connects assets, liquidity and services across the investment lifecycle. “When we think about private assets, liquidity and services, those are the three legs of the stool,” he says.

“We support clients not only through asset creation but also by providing financing solutions – everything from longer-term net asset value loans to short-term bridge facilities. Combined with custody and fund administration capabilities, that forms a complete liquidity framework.”

As funds mature, the focus of support changes. Early-stage vehicles may require fund administration and capital call financing; later-stage funds may require secondary intermediation or financing for continuation vehicles. “Our role is to connect those stages,” Serra-Janer says. “We can adapt solutions as investors move through the fund lifecycle.”

Transparency as a component of liquidity

As private assets take a larger share of institutional portfolios, transparency has become inseparable from liquidity. Asset owners want timely, detailed insight into exposures across private equity, credit, infrastructure and real assets – often alongside their public market holdings.

“Transparency has effectively become part of the liquidity equation,” Serra-Janer says. “Asset owners want to understand their exposures across private and public holdings, and to report back to their stakeholders in a consolidated way. That requires consistent data and reporting standards.”

Wise adds: “Even the most sophisticated investors are asking for a single, connected view of their portfolios. Without standardised data, it’s difficult to manage risk or liquidity efficiently.”

Fragmented data, fragmented liquidity

Jason Mirsky, J.P. Morgan

Private markets data remains highly fragmented. Information arrives from multiple fund administrators and data vendors, in different formats and levels of detail. “A manager might use several administrators, each with different systems,” says Jason Mirsky, head of data solutions at J.P. Morgan. “Asset owners then receive information through portals, emails or PDFs that need to be extracted and normalised before any analysis can begin.”

That fragmentation can itself become a liquidity risk. “If investors cannot see their full exposures, they can’t rebalance quickly,” Mirsky says. “Data latency and inconsistency create uncertainty about where capital is committed.”

Building data infrastructure

J.P. Morgan developed its Fusion platform to address these structural data issues. Fusion aggregates, cleans and connects data from multiple sources – public and private – using a canonical data model and graph-based architecture that link related entities and instruments.

“Fusion can join data across systems and asset classes,” Mirsky says. “We’ve built machine learning models that reconcile millions of company names and identifiers across providers such as Bloomberg, Refinitiv and MSCI Private Capital Solutions [formerly Burgiss]. That enables clients to connect information about a private fund, its underlying portfolio companies and comparable public securities in one environment.”

The results are tangible. “Many institutions tell us it used to take three months to calculate something as basic as country-of-risk exposure,” Mirsky adds. “With Fusion, that can be done the same day.”

Through partnerships with providers such as MSCI Private Capital Solutions, Fusion also delivers look-through analysis, linking fund-level data with underlying portfolio companies to enable exposure and stress-testing across multiple layers. “Joining accounting, reference and market data means investors can analyse, for example, exposure to a specific country or sector instantly,” Mirsky says.

Analytics and risk integration

Beyond aggregation, Fusion supports performance and risk analytics through integrations with MSCI and FactSet. This allows clients to model correlations between public and private holdings, calculate internal rates of return, and assess ex ante risk using common data inputs.

“Historically, risk and performance teams used different datasets,” Mirsky explains. “Fusion allows them to work from the same underlying data so analysis is consistent across the organisation.”

The platform also supports faster reporting cycles for private assets, where valuation data can lag. “Investors often have to report monthly while receiving private-asset data weeks later,” Mirsky says. “Fusion helps them manage lagged and current views so they can run risk and performance reporting on schedule.”

Data quality and the path to AI

As firms experiment with artificial intelligence tools, Mirsky sees data quality as the decisive factor. “You can’t get reliable AI outputs without structured, contextual data,” he says. “Fusion doesn’t just deliver datasets – it provides the semantic layer that describes what each field means. That allows AI systems to interpret financial concepts correctly, such as recognising that a bond’s maturity date and an option’s expiry are functionally similar.”

Fusion integrates directly into clients’ chosen cloud environments – for example, Snowflake – providing the data and its descriptive metadata. “That means, when clients use AI tools in those environments, the system already understands the context of the data it’s querying,” Mirsky says.

From market structure to data infrastructure

The evolution of private market liquidity now rests on two pillars: structural mechanisms such as secondaries and financing, and data infrastructure, which delivers transparency and analytical precision.

“The next phase of growth isn’t only about fund structures,” Wise says. “It’s about ensuring investors can value and finance their assets in real time. That requires both financial and digital infrastructure.”

Serra-Janer agrees. “Asset owners are becoming more sophisticated and their expectations higher. Flexibility, transparency and data-driven reporting are now essential for maintaining trust and achieving returns,” she says. “Our aim is to connect both sides – market structure and data – so investors can navigate the full lifecycle of their private market investments.”

In that sense, data platforms such as Fusion are becoming part of the sector’s core infrastructure: the systems that enable information to flow as efficiently as capital.

Fusion by J.P. Morgan

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