Private Credit Wants a Top Spot on Your Mobile Investing App
Nonbank lenders are making it easy for ordinary people to buy their products, as interest from institutions flatlines.
All it took for Jess Dato Paliogiannis to become an investor in the esoteric world of private credit was a few taps on her mobile phone. The 30-year-old New Yorker, an operations consultant to startups, used the Titan app to put $2,000 into a fund managed by the global investing giant Carlyle Group Inc. “It was exciting to invest in something that traditionally was not available to retail investors,” says Dato Paliogiannis, who recently sold the position, scoring a 37% gain over two years, after fees. Now she’s on the lookout for easier ways to access private credit on other platforms.
Dato Paliogiannis is just the kind of person the industry is trying to woo. Private lenders have spent the past dozen years minting billionaires by usurping traditional Wall Street banks and packaging their risky corporate loans into products that have become staples of insurers and pension funds. But with interest from large institutions tapering off, they’re going after Main Street. “We are probably in the second or the third inning in the expansion of these private credit products in the broader, mass-affluent market,” says Shane Clifford, head of global wealth at Carlyle. “There’s still significant upside to go from here.”