SuperReturn 2026: Private markets at scale: unlocking capital and rewiring the plumbing for the wealth era

At the Motive Partners and S&P Global SuperReturn invitational in Berlin, moderator Marc Andrew was joined by Andy Stewart, Andrew Tarver, Chris Sparenberg, and Andrea Wildsmith, operators and builders from across the Motive ecosystem and its partners.

Private markets are entering the wealth era, but momentum alone will not carry them there. The panel took aim at questions the industry often treats as settled: whether retail demand is proven, whether today's wrappers are their final form, and whether the rails can carry what is coming.

The friction is structural. The unit of instruction in private markets remains a physical legal document that can take weeks to process, redemptions still arrive by fax and post, and an industry handling roughly 150,000 subscriptions a year is contemplating demand measured in millions of orders. The sell order, as the panel noted, barely existed as a concept until three years ago.

The work underway reflects that reality. Wrappers are being redesigned around the liquidity individual investors actually need, shared taxonomies are giving the asset class a common language, and valuation practices are evolving toward the transparency the wealth channel expects.

None of this is unprecedented. Public markets solved their own paperwork crisis and now clear a billion orders before lunch. The infrastructure can be built, and the firms that set the standards, rather than wait for them, will shape what follows.

We’re a Napster today, we need to be a Spotify tomorrow. We are in the first iteration of Private Markets automation”. Tarver observed.“We’ve got a few things right and quite a few things to improve.”

Andrew Tarver, President of Private Markets Network, InvestCloud & Founding Partner, Motive Partners