Private Markets in Wealth Management: Risks and Rewards
Ryan Nauman hosts Zephyr’s Adjusted for Risk podcast with Dana D’Auria, Group President of Solutions and Co-CIO at Envestnet, discussing the growing role of private markets in wealth management. D’Auria explains how Envestnet combines asset management and wealth tech, then outlines key trends: companies staying private longer, increased demand from the wealth channel, and expanded use of vehicles like interval funds, tender offers, private BDCs, and private REITs. They emphasize that “semi-liquid” vehicles can become illiquid during dislocations, and highlight major risks including illiquidity, return dispersion across managers, and valuation/marking differences versus public markets that can overstate diversification metrics like correlation. D’Auria advises using specialist due diligence, evaluating tail-risk metrics, and leveraging available education from asset managers and resources such as Tony Davidow’s book.
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Learn more about Envestnet here.
00:00 Podcast kickoff
01:18 Meet Dana D’Auria
03:41 Wealth tech meets investing
05:52 Why private markets boom
09:09 Diversification reality check
13:00 IPOs and index impact
16:11 Access vehicles expand
18:00 Advisor adoption spectrum
21:21 Interval funds liquidity
26:34 Key risks and due diligence
34:21 Education and wrap-up