Private Wealth as a Growth Engine for Private Markets
ROYC is a leading B2B financial technology company providing a comprehensive operating system for private markets, enabling private equity firms, banks, asset managers, and multi-family offices to seamlessly access, distribute, and manage private investments at scale. As private markets continue to expand, financial institutions increasingly require scalable, technology-driven solutions to manage complexity, optimize fund operations, and deliver outstanding client experiences. ROYC combines cutting-edge private markets technology with tailored fund structuring and investment services. Its intuitive and scalable platform replaces manual processes with automation and real-time data access, transforming how private market investments are managed across the entire fund lifecycle.
Private investors are already playing a significant role in capital raising within private markets. To tap into the private wealth channel and take a leading role in the industry’s next growth phase, an adequate legal, technological, and structuring infrastructure is required. Banks and family offices are called upon to act as intermediaries between funds and investors whose objectives differ from those of institutional LPs: they do not think in terms of capital calls or vintage years, but rather in terms of goals and outcomes, while expecting a seamless digital experience, integrated reporting, and realistic ticket sizes. This is the perspective of Mathias Leijon, Founder & President, and Octavian Popescu, Founder & CEO of ROYC, a young company positioning itself as an “operating system” for private markets, offering fund structuring and architecture, investment solutions, and digital operations.
In Europe, private equity is going through a challenging period, with deals and exits becoming more complex due to an uncertain environment, and as a result investors have slowed the deployment of new capital. Could this situation change in the coming months?
Popescu: The market is not broken; it is simply being repriced. We have moved from unmanageable uncertainty to modelable complexity. Leverage is more expensive, valuations are normalizing, and sellers are adjusting to the new cost of capital. It is uncomfortable, but healthy. The real transformation concerns who is investing and through which channels: institutional flows are slowing, while private wealth capital is growing, seeking regulated infrastructures to access private markets through existing banking relationships and advisory networks. This is not a rebound in volumes, but a rebuilding of distribution: from a few large LPs to thousands of smaller investors, managed digitally. Those who invest today in legal, structuring, and technological infrastructure will control the next phase of growth.
Secondary markets are increasingly becoming a release valve for GPs looking to sell assets to generate liquidity. Do you see opportunities in the secondaries market?
Popescu: Secondaries have evolved from a niche to the circulatory system of liquidity, offering price discovery, portfolio rebalancing, and vintage diversification. The opportunity lies in institutionalizing private investors’ access to secondaries: transparent processes, clear governance, and structures integrated into wealth portfolios, rather than opportunistic transactions. LP-led transactions offer attractive entry points; GP-led transactions work only with balanced economics and well-managed conflicts. The risk is using secondaries as a liquidity shortcut instead of a strategic tool. With regulated vehicles and robust reporting, it is possible to offer private clients institutional-grade exposure without sacrificing quality or control.
At the same time, the trend toward semi-liquid and evergreen products is gaining traction, as LPs see them as more flexible vehicles that also help balance exposure to private markets. What is your view?
Leijon: These vehicles respond to a behavioral demand: “How can I access private markets without committing for ten years?” They allow investors to build exposure gradually, automatically reinvest proceeds, and manage allocations flexibly. They work only if liquidity is engineered, not promised: redemption terms aligned with the underlying assets, independent pricing, and disciplined management. When structured properly, they bridge the gap between daily liquidity expectations and the inherently illiquid nature of private markets. For advisors, the shift is from periodic fundraising to continuous access, enabled by digital and regulated architectures. Evergreen vehicles thus become a cornerstone of modern private market distribution.
What is your view on private credit and infrastructure?
Leijon: Private credit has moved from a niche strategy to a core income-generating component. In a context where banks are more selective, it offers visible yields and downside protection. Infrastructure, by contrast, provides long duration, inflation protection, and exposure to the real economy. In private wealth portfolios, combining credit (stability and cash flows) with infrastructure (compounding and diversification) creates balance. The innovation is not about inventing new products, but about packaging well-known strategies efficiently, on platforms that standardize onboarding, capital calls, and reporting.
In recent years, there has been an expectation that private investors will play an increasingly important role in private markets. Do you share this view? Which investor segments will be most interested?
Popescu: Absolutely—and it is already happening. Private wealth is the next institutional pillar. Banks and family offices must offer access to private equity, credit, infrastructure, and secondaries as an integral part of their service. However, private clients do not think in terms of vintages or capital calls: they think in terms of objectives and outcomes, and they expect a seamless digital experience, integrated reporting, and realistic ticket sizes. The market is evolving from single subscriptions to true private market programs within portfolios. This requires institutional rigor—structuring, compliance, and data—combined with a customer experience tailored to private banking channels. The competitive advantage will lie in the ability to scale this model.
In your view, what are the main limitations and challenges faced by private investors (family offices or private clients supported by wealth advisors/private banking) when accessing private market funds?
Leijon: The barriers are practical, not a lack of intent. The five recurring obstacles are:
- Access and minimums: institutional ticket sizes that are too high for individual investors.
- Operational friction: onboarding and capital calls managed manually via email and PDFs.
- Tight timelines: subscription windows that are too short to coordinate clients and signatures.
- Portfolio construction: the need for strategic coherence, not a random collection of funds.
- Customer experience: ten different portals with inconsistent data are no longer acceptable.
These inefficiencies explain the persistent under-allocation. The solution is not “more product,” but infrastructure that makes investment intent actionable.
What solutions do you offer to address these challenges?
Popescu: What the market needs is not another marketplace, but a true operating system for private markets: a single infrastructure that connects GPs to private wealth channels, operating under partners’ brands. We offer three pillars:
- Fund structuring and architecture: regulated feeders, evergreen vehicles, and master funds that aggregate smaller tickets into institutional allocations, in compliance with European regulations;
- Curated investment solutions: balanced portfolios across private equity, credit, secondaries, and real assets, built around risk and liquidity profiles rather than product trends;
- End-to-end digital operations: an integrated, white-label platform covering onboarding, KYC/AML, subscriptions, capital calls, distributions, and reporting.
With this infrastructure, private wealth becomes a scalable and sustainable channel, while GPs gain access to a diversified LP base. ROYC provides the technology and structuring, while partners retain the client relationship and the value they deliver.
This article is a translation of an interview originally published in Italian by Valerio Magni, MondoInvestor.
For the original version, please refer to the source.