Preqin expects global private markets assets under management to exceed $34 trillion by the end of 2031. The forecast comes from Private Markets in 2031, the research firm's five-year outlook, released in late October. It covers every major private asset class and region, and it carries a clear message about where returns will come from next.
Cameron Joyce, Global Head of Preqin Private Markets Research, put it this way: returns are likely to be driven "less by broad market tailwinds and more by effective manager selection."
For family offices, which already allocate heavily to private markets, the headline number matters less than what sits underneath it. Five takeaways stand out:
Preqin forecasts private equity assets will reach $11.6 trillion by 2031. Within that total, growth equity and secondaries are projected to expand faster than traditional buyout strategies.
The secondaries trend is worth watching for family offices on both sides of the market. More secondary activity can mean more opportunities to buy fund interests at a discount. It can also mean more continuation vehicles and other restructured positions landing in portfolios, each with its own terms, valuation timing and reporting format. A single original commitment can turn into several positions over its life, and someone has to keep track of them.
Private credit is expected to top $5 trillion by 2031, according to Preqin. Its forecast covers private credit funds with corporate underlying assets.
For family offices, the growth of private credit adds to a question we explored in our piece on family offices buying distressed credit: how much credit exposure does the family already carry across its funds, direct loans, operating businesses and borrowing entities? As allocations grow, that question gets harder to answer from manager reports alone.
Preqin expects evergreen structures to be the fastest-growing segment of private credit. Evergreen funds are open-ended. Investors can typically subscribe on a regular schedule and request redemptions, usually subject to limits set out in the fund documents. That makes them a common route for bringing private assets to individual investors and wealth clients.
The format has drawn caution. FamilyWealthReport's coverage notes that industry figures have raised doubts about "the ability to offer liquidity when underlying assets can be relatively illiquid."
For family offices, the practical issue is that evergreen and closed-end funds behave differently. A closed-end fund calls capital over time and distributes as investments are sold. An evergreen fund is funded upfront, values its holdings on a set schedule and may limit how much can be redeemed in a given period. A portfolio that holds both needs reporting that can show commitments and unfunded capital for one and redemption terms and notice periods for the other. Treating an evergreen allocation as if it were liquid cash can overstate how much the family could actually access in a stressed market.
Preqin's base case puts venture capital assets at $3.79 trillion by 2031. Infrastructure is forecast to reach $2.74 trillion, growing at an annualized rate of 9.8%.
The two asset classes look very different from an operations perspective. Venture portfolios tend to involve many smaller positions, valuations that change infrequently and outcomes that depend heavily on a few companies. Infrastructure tends to involve longer holding periods and more predictable income. Both tend to arrive as quarterly PDFs rather than data feeds, which means someone has to extract and organize the numbers before they can inform decisions.
Preqin expects North America to remain the largest market, with assets projected to exceed $23 trillion by 2031. Europe is forecast to pass $7 trillion and Asia-Pacific to approach $3 trillion.
Family offices with global portfolios already deal with funds denominated in different currencies, reporting on different calendars and subject to different tax rules. As private allocations grow across regions, multi-currency reporting becomes a larger part of the operational workload.
If Preqin is right that manager selection will matter more than market tailwinds, the quality of a family office's fund data becomes part of its investment process. Three implications follow.
Comparable performance data comes first. Evaluating managers means comparing metrics such as TVPI, DPI and IRR across funds that report in different formats and on different timelines. Our explainers on DPI, TVPI, RVPI and MOIC and IRR versus time-weighted return cover how these measures differ.
Liquidity planning has to span both fund types. Unfunded commitments to closed-end funds, expected distributions and the redemption terms of evergreen vehicles all affect how much cash the family can count on. Our guide to capital calls and unfunded commitments explains the building blocks.
Exposure needs to be visible across the whole portfolio. More secondaries, continuation vehicles and co-investments make it easier for the same company or sector to appear in several places. Without a consolidated view by entity and asset, overlap can go unnoticed until it matters.
None of this depends on the exact size of private markets in 2031. It depends on how much of a family's wealth sits in assets that report slowly and in different formats, and that share has been rising.
MYFO is a family office operating system that connects the entities, assets and liabilities, stakeholders and documents that make up a family's financial world. For family offices adding private market exposure, MYFO supports:
As private markets grow, so does the amount of information family offices have to manage. A connected data foundation lets teams spend less time collecting fund data and more time evaluating it.
Book a demo to see how MYFO helps family offices manage private market investments.
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