There was a time when private markets moved in neat sequences. A fund manager raised capital, a placement agent opened doors, an administrator handled the paperwork, and a depositary kept watch. Everyone had their lane, their contract, their comfort zone.
That tidy choreography is disappearing. The business of private markets no longer works like a relay race. Capital moves constantly, not in stages. Investors come in and out, buy secondaries, co-invest, or recycle distributions into new funds. The result is a network that behaves more like an ecosystem than a supply chain. And the intermediaries who once handed off the baton are now learning to run side by side.
I see this shift every time I speak with fund managers in Luxembourg. They no longer ask who should perform which task but how to connect them all. Technology is doing the heavy lifting. Fund-admin platforms are evolving into distribution portals. Data that once sat in dusty PDF reports now feeds AI models that reconcile portfolios, forecast liquidity, and even detect compliance gaps. What used to take an army of accountants now happens with a few clicks and some clever code.
The age of silos is ending. What replaces it will depend on how courageously we connect the dots, and Luxembourg, if it dares, could become the world’s most connected marketplace for private capital.
Regulation is catching up, too. With AIFMD II and ELTIF 2.0, the lines between structuring, distribution, and liquidity are softening. The rules are finally starting to reflect how capital actually flows. In this new reality, administrators, AIFMs, and secondaries brokers are no longer rivals but parts of the same circulatory system.
Luxembourg sits right in the middle of it. Every layer of the ecosystem is already here: the fund managers, the service providers, the regulators, the technologists. The next challenge is not to add more pieces but to make them speak the same language through data standards, digital rails, and shared trust.
Freeing talent
The great intermediary reboot is not about replacing people with software. It is about freeing talent from the mechanics of fund operations so it can focus on insight, relationships, and long-term value.
The age of silos is ending. What replaces it will depend on how courageously we connect the dots, and Luxembourg, if it dares, could become the world’s most connected marketplace for private capital.
Christophe Santer is a columnist for Investment Officer Luxembourg. A Luxembourg native, Santer has nearly two decades of experience in fund administration, investor services, and private markets. He also works as director of business development manager at bunch.
