MSCI and UBS have entered a strategic partnership aimed at addressing the persistent data opacity in private markets, an asset class that has grown rapidly but lacks the standardized measurement tools common in public equities and bonds. The collaboration, announced Thursday, pairs MSCI's index and analytics expertise with UBS's alternatives platform, which oversees more than $340 billion across hedge funds, private equity, private credit, real estate and infrastructure.
Under the agreement, UBS will become an early adopter of MSCI's AI-powered private markets platform, contributing insights from its limited partner, wealth management and asset management divisions. MSCI will provide independent data, analytics and modeling to create a more connected experience across the private markets investment lifecycle, from fund discovery to portfolio management and reporting.
Henry Fernandez, MSCI's chairman and chief executive, described the effort as an extension of the firm's founding mission to bring rigor to investing. "As private markets become an increasingly important part of the investment landscape, investors are looking for the insights, rigor and accessibility that they have come to expect in public markets," Fernandez said. UBS Group Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti highlighted the bank's ambition to "help to shape the next generation of private markets portfolio management solutions."
The partnership arrives just one day after BlackRock announced an expansion of the Preqin Benchmarks and Indices suite within its Aladdin platform. BlackRock's enhanced offering, now available across Preqin Pro, Aladdin, eFront and Aladdin Wealth, covers closed-end fund-level indices built on daily cash-flow data from more than 10,000 funds representing upward of $13 trillion in assets, alongside more than 140,000 peer benchmarks. This move extends institutional-quality benchmarking into advisory and model-portfolio workflows that have historically lacked such depth.
Last year, Morningstar launched the US Modern Market 100 Index, which draws on PitchBook data to track the 90 largest U.S. public companies alongside 10 of the biggest late-stage, venture-backed private firms. These initiatives reflect a broader Wall Street race to solve the data gap that has long frustrated financial advisors, who cite fragmented reporting and inconsistent benchmarks as reasons for hesitating on private allocations, even as demand for diversification beyond public markets climbs among high-net-worth clients and retail investors.
UBS's own read on the alternatives landscape, detailed in its most recent semi-annual outlook report, describes a period of stability tested by disruption. Portfolio manager James Pilkington noted that underlying performance in private equity has remained steady even as the exit environment has yet to fully unlock, with persistently high interest rates keeping deal activity below expectations. Technology and software valuations face added complexity as investors weigh artificial intelligence's long-term effect on business models.
Joseph Sciortino, who heads UBS's Unified Global Alternatives private credit business, pointed to stable carry and resilient credit metrics in the first quarter, even as valuations softened amid spread volatility and AI-related uncertainty. Corporate direct lending funds were largely flat in the period, as steady interest income offset markdowns tied to widening syndicated loan spreads. UBS sees diversification into asset-backed finance, including residential and commercial real estate debt and specialty finance, as a practical way to strengthen portfolios while preserving income-focused objectives.
"While elevated redemption activity led to increased gating across non-traded BDCs, this dynamic has not translated into meaningful fundamental stress among managers on the platform," the report said. "Looking ahead, we believe diversification within private credit, particularly into asset-backed finance, offers attractive opportunities to enhance portfolio resilience across varying market environments."
For advisors, the MSCI-UBS tie-up adds to a growing array of providers promising a single system to treat private assets with the same rigor as public securities. The partnership underscores the industry's push to build infrastructure that can support the next generation of private markets investing, as firms like BlackRock and Corastone also work to address the data gap that hampers wealth manager allocations.
