From product-picking to portfolio construction: building managed accounts for private markets

Private markets are moving steadily into the mainstream of wealth management. Advisers are hearing more about private equity, credit, infrastructure and real assets than ever before. Yet one practical question continues to surface across the industry: how can these investments actually be implemented within client portfolios?

For Christian Ryan, founder and Executive Chair at FinCap, the real challenge is not identifying attractive private market opportunities. Instead, it is building the portfolio construction, governance and implementation infrastructure required to manage them within diversified portfolios.

“Everyone’s talking about private assets and wanting to allocate more capital to them, but the real question is how do we actually implement these ideas in client portfolios,” Ryan says.

That question sits at the centre of FinCap, a private markets investment and portfolio solutions business developing a private-asset managed-account capability for advisers and sophisticated investors. Its focus is on bringing greater structure to how private assets are accessed, constructed and managed within portfolios, rather than approaching them as a series of standalone product selections.

Moving beyond product selection

Managed accounts have become an increasingly important structure within wealth management. A large share of new investment flows now move through managed account platforms rather than traditional managed funds. However, the underlying technology was largely built for liquid assets such as listed equities and ETFs.

Private assets often do not fit neatly into those systems. As a result, advisers interested in private markets frequently end up selecting individual funds rather than building integrated portfolios.

Ryan believes this creates a structural gap between investment ideas and portfolio implementation.

“We’ve heard some great strategies and product ideas, but advisers still ask how they actually run a portfolio of private assets,” he says.

Instead of focusing purely on product selection, Ryan argues private assets should be approached through structured portfolio design. In his view, the product should support the strategy rather than dictate it.

Building a private-asset managed account

FinCap’s solution delivers a private‑asset managed account framework for private markets, combining portfolio construction, research, governance, and liquidity management within one platform.

“The technology is only one part of the solution,” Ryan says. “You need research capability, governance, liquidity management and portfolio construction to make private-asset managed accounts work properly.”

The platform lets advisers design portfolios across private equity, private credit, real estate and infrastructure. It gives advisers and clients transparent exposure, tailored structures, and reporting systems built for private assets, including portfolio‑level visibility on liquidity and risk.

Designing portfolios for illiquid assets

Liquidity remains one of the most common concerns surrounding private markets. Ryan argues that managing liquidity begins with thoughtful portfolio design rather than attempting to engineer liquidity into inherently illiquid investments.

“The first step is designing the portfolio properly” Ryan observes. “If you load a portfolio with illiquid assets, you have to accept that it will take time to access that capital.”

To manage this dynamic, FinCap incorporates special purpose vehicles (SPVs) within portfolio structures. These vehicles are intended to allow the platform to balance allocations across funds with different liquidity characteristics while maintaining overall portfolio flexibility.

The platform supports monthly contributions and periodic withdrawals. It nets flows across multiple client accounts before trading with external managers, reducing unnecessary transactions in private‑market exposures.

Ryan believes these operational tools help advisers integrate private markets into portfolios while respecting the long-term nature of the asset class.

Creating a secondary liquidity ecosystem

Beyond portfolio construction, the platform also aims to improve liquidity options through scale and market connectivity. By aggregating trades across multiple portfolios, transactions are intended to be executed more efficiently with institutional counterparties.

Ryan says this approach draws on lessons from the institutional secondary market.

“What we’re trying to do is create the infrastructure and marketplace that allows advisers to trade and manage private assets at scale,” he says.

Over time, FinCap sees potential to broaden liquidity pathways further, including through institutional secondary market participants where appropriate. While any such transactions would be subject to market conditions and asset-specific considerations, they may provide an additional mechanism to support portfolio liquidity management.

Bringing private markets into portfolio management

Ryan believes the next phase of private market adoption within wealth management will depend less on identifying investment opportunities and more on building the systems required to manage them effectively.

Private markets represent a vast opportunity set that advisers have historically struggled to access in a structured way. Managed account frameworks may provide a pathway to integrate these assets alongside traditional investments within client portfolios.

“We’ve spent decades focusing on daily liquid markets, but there is an enormous pool of private assets that advisers and their clients have largely missed,” Ryan says.

If platforms and advisers can build the operational infrastructure to support these investments, private assets may become a far more common component of diversified wealth portfolios.