Private credit secondaries have moved into the mainstream. Industry volumes have expanded dramatically, with private debt secondaries reaching approximately $15 billion in 2025, according to Jefferies. The segment could reach more than $40 billion by 2027. Our 2026 Secondaries Survey, produced in partnership with Private Equity Wire, found that 83% of managers expect credit secondaries to grow over the next 12 months, making it one of the fastest-growing segments of the broader secondary market.
For European managers, however, rapid growth is exposing a deeper operational weakness. According to the survey, European firms cite pricing complexity as their top challenge in credit secondaries, with 32% identifying it as the primary obstacle, the highest level of concern of any region.
The issue is not simply that credit is difficult to price. The issue is that many firms are attempting to price portfolios without sufficient look-through data.
Europe’s Maturity Mismatch Problem
Private credit portfolios often contain assets with maturities that extend beyond the life of the originating fund. As those portfolios season, managers increasingly need liquidity solutions that allow high-quality loans to be held through maturity.
This is one reason Evercore found that GP-led credit secondaries outstripped LP-led transactions for the first time in 2025. Rather than forcing a sale of performing assets, managers are using continuation vehicles to extend ownership while maintaining exposure to attractive income-generating positions.
This creates a complex valuation challenge. Buyers must assess not only the quality of the underlying loans, but also the interaction between fund life, loan maturity, cash flow timing and refinancing risk. In Europe, where regulatory requirements and reporting standards can vary across jurisdictions, that analysis becomes even more demanding.
The Look-Through Gap
Many credit secondary transactions now require buyers to evaluate more than 1,000 underlying positions within 24–48-hour windows.
Without instrument-level transparency, pricing becomes heavily dependent on assumptions. Managers may know the aggregate characteristics of a portfolio, but they often lack a harmonized view of individual exposures, covenant structures, sector concentrations and maturity profiles. This is why pricing complexity and data management are increasingly intertwined.
The report highlights that 20% of managers see portfolio assessment and reporting as a major operational challenge, while another 12% cite data ingestion and aggregation. Those numbers become particularly significant in credit secondaries, where a single pricing error can materially affect transaction economics.
As competition intensifies, the firms that can analyze underlying exposures fastest and most accurately will have a clear advantage in competitive bidding processes.
Three Capabilities European Managers Should Build Now
Credit secondaries are unlikely to become less complex. The operational response should therefore focus on scalability.
- Automated data ingestion
Portfolio information arrives in multiple formats, including lender reports and administrator files, as well as unstructured documents. Automated ingestion reduces the manual effort required to normalize this data and accelerates the underwriting process.
- Look-through analytics
Managers need the ability to analyze exposures at the instrument level, not simply at the portfolio level. Sector concentrations, covenant quality, borrower performance and maturity profiles should be visible in a unified analytical framework.
- AI-assisted maturity mismatch modeling
Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to support scenario analysis and stress testing. For credit secondaries, this includes modeling refinancing risk, cash flow timing and potential maturity extensions across large pools of underlying loans.
The Next Competitive Divide
Credit secondaries are entering a phase where operational sophistication may matter as much as investment expertise. As the market expands, return dispersion is likely to widen. Some firms will rely on broad portfolio assumptions, while others will build deep look-through capabilities that allow them to identify mispriced opportunities and underwrite risk with greater precision.
For European managers, the winners will be the firms that can transform fragmented credit data into actionable pricing intelligence before the market moves on.
Read the full report to learn more about how building the right data foundation can lead to success.
