Nancy Curtin

Designing a private markets portfolio involves navigating trade-offs across liquidity, access, duration, transparency, and return expectations. As wealth managers seek to balance traditional and alternative exposures, the challenge lies in building strategies that optimise allocations across evergreen funds, co-investments, secondaries and SMAs, while also uncovering overlooked or uncorrelated sources of value. An often-underappreciated element is the treatment of uncalled capital and the timing of capital calls, where cash drag and risk allocation can significantly impact long-term performance. This session will explore how allocators are managing these frictions in practice - and how thoughtful portfolio construction can balance returns with flexibility or control.