The new rules of retail LP management

72% of millennial and Gen Z investors say that “it's no longer possible to achieve above-average returns solely on traditional stocks and bonds,” according to Bank of America’s 2024 Study of Wealthy Americans. And with nearly 90% of global companies remaining private, the world’s largest firms, from Blackstone to Apollo to KKR, are setting up private wealth operations to give these retail investors exposure to this “ocean of possibility,” according to Joan Solatar, Global Head of Private Wealth at Blackstone.

Some other moves include:

• Empower announcing private equity and credit options in some of its retirement plans

• Vanguard partnering with Blackstone and Wellington to launch interval funds

• Coatue's new tech fund targeting retail investors with a $50,000 minimum

It’s a seemingly perfect situation: Retail investors want access to private markets, and private market fund managers want to provide that access. But it’s not so easy.

Set to inherit almost $124 trillion through 2048, younger and digitally-native investors are entering the private markets with higher demands for up-to-date information, more frequent communication, and a need for more education than the traditional institutional investor.

While classic LPs–pension funds, family offices, sovereign wealth funds, endowments, and foundations—might accept quarterly reports and annual meetings, the new entrants expect 15-minute valuation updates and mobile-accessible platforms—not the slow pace and minimal information that private markets GPs have traditionally provided.

And given that barely half (54%) of venture capital funds raised in 2018 have returned any capital to their investors, and only 30% of 2020’s vintage have done the same, retail investors are understandably clamoring for more information about the why behind the what.

Some observers have suggested that GPs are unlikely to be able (or willing) to provide additional information. However, every retail LP that chooses a competitor because your investor experience feels outdated, impersonal, and out-of-touch represents lost AUM, lower fund streams, and fewer future fundraising relationships.

Retail LPs are looking for:

• Mobile-accessible investor portals with up-to-date data

• Proactive communication about portfolio developments

• Educational content that explains private market mechanics

• Quick responses to wealth manager inquiries

• Transparent fee reporting and performance attribution

To win retail capital, GPs need to rethink how IR functions. This starts with education. Michael Episcope, co-founder and co-CEO of Origin Investments, put it plainly:

“Not one of our investors has invested with us without at least a 30-minute-long call to talk through the details of the funds and how we operate. The last thing we want is someone investing in an asset [when] we haven’t set expectations about our responsibilities and deliverables.”

Education is also often required on the adviser side of the table, as many retail investors come to a private wealth fund through advisers. And although many advisers recognize private investments are becoming essential to well-diversified portfolios, they don’t always feel equipped to fully explain and act upon the growing suite of investment products. "The education lift is significant,” said Solotar. “The majority of advisers across the U.S. and certainly around the world have still never allocated any of their client assets to privates."

Blackstone’s private wealth managers will often attend client meetings with advisers to field real-world questions and familiarize advisers with how to position Blackstone’s private investment products to LPs. She shared an example: “Our product person attended five or six client meetings with one adviser to help him explain the role and importance of alternatives. Finally, the adviser had the confidence to talk about alternatives himself.”

To help educate both retail LPs and RIAs, your IR teams could develop content like:

• Onboarding guides that explain the basics of private markets investing (i.e., liquidity, risk, reporting cadence, fees).

• Timelines that protectively tell investors when they can expect K-1s, performance updates, and distributions, flagging any common delays up front.

• Briefings that walk prospective LPs through the lifecycle of an investment

• Small-group webinars with IR leaders or deal team members to review your fund strategy, performance drivers, and macro-economic context.

Retail LPs don’t just want returns—they want clarity about what they’re investing in, when they’ll receive information, and how they can access it. Up-to-date educational content, proactive communication, and transparency about things like K-1 delays or reporting cadences are essential for building trust.

• Can your team answer "What's my current NAV?" without spending 20 minutes in Excel?

• When a wealth manager calls about fee calculations, do you have that data instantly accessible?

• Is your investment data consolidated in one easily accessible and frequently updated portal?

• Who ensures data accuracy so all of your stakeholders can trust the latest update?

To do all of this and more, GPs must abandon outdated attitudes to IR and invest in the infrastructure that delivers an experience retail investors expect

If done right, ongoing investor relations becomes more than a service function. It becomes a competitive advantage. But serving thousands of investors means scaling your tech stack.

That requires:

• A single source of truth for all investor and investment data.

• A modern portal that gives LPs seamless, reliable access to their information.

• A data model that’s structured and connected, not buried in spreadsheets and siloed systems.

Every day you delay upgrading your IR infrastructure, you're falling further behind in the race for retail capital. As your fund operations partner, Juniper Square gives your IR team the connected system of record that makes investor data consistent, reliable, and easy to access—no more digging through documents or reconciling conflicting datasets.

With JunieAI, Juniper Square’s enterprise-grade AI platform purpose-built for private markets, you can unlock insights instantly, automate communication workflows, and answer LP questions in seconds. In short: you can deliver the public-market-level transparency retail LPs expect—without ballooning your IR headcount.

Retail isn’t just another channel. It’s the future of fundraising. The firms that succeed in this new era will be those that adapt their IR playbooks, upgrade their technology, and deliver an LP experience that feels as intuitive as a brokerage app but is tailored to the nuances of the private markets.

The capital is waiting. The question is: is your firm ready to meet it?

Learn more about the rise of retail investors in our report with PitchBook →