PRIVATE CREDIT  |  EXPAT INVESTORS  |  STRUCTURED INCOME

Private credit is no longer an institutional preserve. For high-net-worth investors living outside their country of origin, it is quietly becoming the most compelling structural income opportunity of the decade – if you know how to access it.

Where Growth Happens Now

Something fundamental has changed in how companies grow – and how sophisticated investors generate returns. Where growth once happened after a company’s initial public offering, it now happens beforehand.

Private markets assets under management have grown five-fold since 2010, reaching over $13 trillion globally. In the late 1990s, the median age of a US company at IPO was around five and a half years. By 2024, that had risen to 14 years. The number of publicly listed companies in the US has fallen from over 8,000 in 1996 to fewer than 6,000 today. The value creation that once belonged to public market investors has migrated – quietly, structurally – to private capital.

For HNW expat investors managing wealth across borders, this migration carries a direct implication: portfolios anchored entirely in public markets are now accessing a smaller portion of the opportunity set than they were a generation ago.

The value creation that once belonged to public market investors has migrated, quietly and structurally, to private capital.

Private Credit: The Income Layer Institutional Investors Understood First

Private credit – direct lending to companies outside the traditional banking system – has grown alongside private equity for the same structural reasons. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, tightening regulation led banks to withdraw from segments of the lending market, particularly mid-market corporate lending. Non-bank lenders stepped in. And they have not stepped back.

Today, approximately 90% of US mid-market buyouts are financed by private credit, up from around 50% in 2017. Private credit now sits at the intersection of two long-term trends: the disintermediation of traditional banking and the increasing appetite of sophisticated investors for yield that public bond markets can no longer reliably provide.

For investors, the appeal is structural. Private credit offers a meaningful yield premium over public credit – often in the low double digits for senior direct lending – in exchange for patient, longer-term capital. Loans are typically secured against a company’s cash flows or assets. Interest payments are contractual. The income profile is consistent and largely uncorrelated with equity market volatility.

When public markets experienced elevated volatility in 2025, driven largely by policy uncertainty and tariff shocks, broadly syndicated loan issuance in April fell to its lowest point since August 2024. Private credit issuance, by contrast, remained stable. The structural dynamic is well-established: periods of public market disruption historically lead to private credit capturing a larger share of overall lending activity.

Private credit is not a satellite allocation. It is the mechanism through which structured income has been rebuilt for a new era of investing.

The Expat Investor’s Specific Challenge

High-net-worth investors living and working outside their home countries face a set of challenges that are structurally different from those of domestically-based investors. Traditional advisory relationships are often geographically anchored. Wealth management platforms available in Singapore, Hong Kong or the UAE frequently offer the same suite of public market products, with private market access reserved for institutional clients or those with existing relationships at large private banks.

The result is a structural access gap. The very asset class that major pension funds, endowments and sovereign wealth funds have been increasing allocations to for over a decade – private credit, private equity and private infrastructure – remains out of reach for many of the most financially sophisticated individuals in Asia and the Gulf.

This gap has narrowed considerably. The emergence of evergreen fund structures – open-ended vehicles that allow for regular subscription and periodic redemption – has lowered the effective minimum investment threshold and removed the capital call complexity of traditional drawdown funds. Whereas a traditional limited partnership typically requires commitments of $250,000 or above from qualified purchasers, interval and tender offer fund structures are accessible from as little as $25,000 to accredited investors.

More than 700 such vehicles now exist globally, with total net asset value exceeding $400 billion for the first time. The infrastructure for broader access to private markets is now in place. What has historically been a question of access is increasingly a question of who has the relationships to provide it.

Understanding the Risk Profile

A considered approach to private credit begins with a clear-eyed view of risk. Private credit is not without it. Valuations in private equity – the asset class most closely tied to private credit through buyout financing – remain elevated relative to historical averages. The growing interconnectedness of private equity and private credit means that stress in one part of the market can transmit to the other. Liquidity terms, while improving with newer fund structures, remain more restricted than public bonds or equities.

None of this is reason for avoidance. It is reason for precision. Diversification across managers, loan vintages and credit strategies – direct lending, asset-based finance, infrastructure debt – materially reduces concentration risk. The income buffer in private credit is substantial: even a moderate rise in default rates would need to be sustained and severe to erode the yield advantage that private credit carries over comparably rated public instruments.

Asset-based finance, in particular, presents a compelling opportunity heading into the second half of 2026. This strategy – lending against tangible assets including real estate, equipment, intellectual property and infrastructure – is estimated to represent a total market of around $26 trillion, yet private financing remains a small fraction of that. The durable, contractual cash flows generated by physical assets provide two levels of credit underwriting: the creditworthiness of the borrower and the inherent value of the underlying asset.

For investors who understand this structure and have access to quality managers, asset-based finance can offer attractive risk-adjusted returns with lower correlation to broader corporate credit markets.

Precision, not avoidance, is the right response to the risks in private credit. The income buffer is substantial. The structural opportunity is real.

What a Private Credit Allocation Can Do for a Portfolio

Sophisticated portfolio construction has moved well beyond the traditional 60/40 model. A growing body of evidence from institutional investors suggests that allocations of 15-20% to private assets can materially improve long-term outcomes. BlackRock’s analysis indicates that adding private equity and private credit to a target-date portfolio could generate approximately 15% more capital over a 40-year horizon through compounding, with an annual performance uplift of around 50 basis points.

For an HNW expat investor with a 10 to 20-year wealth horizon – and no immediate need for full liquidity across every part of their portfolio – private credit functions as a structured income layer that public markets are currently ill-equipped to replicate. It provides regular contractual coupon payments, reduced equity-like volatility, and genuine diversification from both listed equities and government bonds.

The key variables are structure, manager selection and access. Not all private credit is alike. Senior secured direct lending to middle-market companies carries a meaningfully different risk profile than junior mezzanine debt or opportunistic credit. Infrastructure debt – long-duration lending to essential assets, with durations of 10 to 30 years – serves a different portfolio function than short-duration asset-based revolving facilities.

These distinctions matter. The value of working with an advisor who specialises in private market access for international investors lies precisely in the ability to match structure to objective – and to navigate a market where information asymmetry remains high and manager quality varies considerably.

The Window Is Open. The Question Is Who You Work With.

Private credit is not a frontier asset class. It is a mature, multi-trillion-dollar market that has quietly become the dominant form of corporate financing for mid-market companies globally. What is changing is access – and the willingness of private wealth advisors who specialise in international clients to provide it.

For HNW expat investors in Singapore, Hong Kong and the Gulf, the structural income case for private credit has rarely been stronger. The yield premium over public markets is real and persistent. The fund structures to access it at reasonable minimums now exist. The manager landscape has deepened significantly.

The conversation that institutional investors had a decade ago – whether to allocate to private credit – is now the conversation that informed private investors are having. The ones who are having it earliest, with the right guidance, tend to be the ones who benefit most from the illiquidity premium before it compresses.

 

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any financial product. Private market investments involve risk, including the potential loss of principal, and are not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Carey Suen provides private wealth advisory services to accredited and qualified investors. To discuss your eligibility and objectives, contact us directly.

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