$226B secondaries boom highlights LPs' needs for better data

For many years, secondaries were considered a niche segment of the private markets. Not anymore. 

With an estimated $226 billion in transaction volume in 2025 alone—including $120 billion in LP-led volume, up 34% year over year—secondaries have evolved into an integral part of private-markets strategies, serving as a core way for investors to manage liquidity and rebalance portfolios to meet their ever-evolving needs. 

As secondaries activity is surging, the number of opportunities investors must assess is multiplying. In many cases, the complexity of these opportunities is increasing, too. Faced with this rapidly transforming market, many LPs are reassessing some of the linchpins of their secondaries strategies, including aspects like pricing, portfolio construction, and risk assessment. 

But some allocators are finding that their existing infrastructure isn’t sufficient to keep pace in a rapidly modernizing space. As the secondaries market gets noisier, the ability to process, validate, and analyze large volumes of portfolio data is increasingly central to the underwriting process. 

These capabilities have become a requirement for any LP that’s serious about secondaries. With the proper tools to collect and interpret this data, investors can ensure that when the next high-stakes opportunity crosses their desk, they’ll be armed with full visibility into every layer of their portfolio to help them make the best decisions possible.

Why secondaries are surging

The ground under LPs’ feet has shifted. In many corners of the private markets, the pace of distributions has slowed. At the same time, exit timelines and fund lifecycles have lengthened. These evolutions have challenged traditional assumptions about capital timing, forcing investors to think more dynamically about exposure and risk.

In response, secondaries have evolved into an essential market solution. Rather than waiting for natural exits, LPs are increasingly using both LP-led and GP-led transactions to reshape portfolios across vintages, strategies, and geographies.

And there are signs this momentum will continue. A recent survey from Coller Capital found that one-third of LPs planned to increase their allocations to secondaries in 2026. 

Increased competition shines a spotlight on data

As secondary volumes grow, competition has intensified. More capital is chasing a finite set of opportunities. Underwriting timelines are tightening. Pricing dynamics are becoming more finely balanced. In this environment, decision-making quality has become a differentiator. 

And the quality of these decisions is typically driven by the robustness of the data that informs them. 

Traditionally, most secondaries are priced at a discount to net asset value (NAV). But the typical discount is shrinking, and premiums to NAV are now appearing more frequently for high-quality portfolios. Across all asset classes, the average price on LP-led secondaries rose to roughly 90% of NAV in the first half of 2025. For buyout funds in particular, the figure climbed to 94%.  

These shrinking discounts reflect tighter bid-ask dynamics as capital chases fewer opportunities. LPs can no longer rely on high-level summaries or static assumptions when assessing transactions that are larger, faster-moving, and structurally more complex than before.

Portfolio construction has also grown more sophisticated. Many secondary deals now involve exposure to hundreds of underlying assets across multiple funds, strategies, and jurisdictions. Accurately understanding concentration risk and performance drivers requires faster, more consistent insight than traditional processes were designed to provide.

As a result, secondaries are becoming more data-driven by necessity. Investors are placing greater emphasis not just on comparability, but also on speed and accuracy, recognizing that as the market scales, even small informational gaps can materially affect outcomes.

Accuracy and transparency are more important than ever

Despite its maturation, the secondary market continues to rely on fragmented and unstructured data. Investors are often forced to piece together information scattered across PDFs, spreadsheets and inconsistent reporting formats. This cumbersome process creates operational friction and consumes significant time that could otherwise be spent on underwriting and decision-making.

At smaller volumes, these inefficiencies are tolerable. At today’s scale, they are not. Slower underwriting, heavier operational burden and compressed timelines increase the risk of mispricing, particularly as deal sizes grow and competition intensifies.

A few specific tools can help LPs navigate these shifting tides. Look-through exposure to assets managed by different GPs can give underwriters the detailed data they require. Manager-level performance signals can offer a new perspective on potential opportunities. Rigorous forward cash flow modeling can provide LPs the assurance they need to pursue deferred-pricing structures. 

Without confidence in your data, the growing scale of the secondaries market could easily become a constraint. With that confidence, the ongoing boom is an opportunity to be seized. 

Carta’s suite of offerings for LPs can help you check all these boxes, plus many more. With our tools at their disposal, underwriters can glean valuable, timely insights into their portfolio exposure, performance, and risk, especially when faced with volatile situations and swiftly changing markets. 

In a market defined by tighter timelines, narrower pricing margins, and growing complexity, we can help build the modern data infrastructure you need to underwrite your investment decisions with the utmost confidence, clarity, and speed.