Data shows that there has been a revival, but geographic differences show up in advisors' views about the alternative investment space.

As announced in late September by .

According to the firm's European Advisor Survey, based on the views of 380 registered financial professionals across Europe (wealth managers, advisors, private banks and family offices), alternative investment adoption is "wide but shallow."

Three-quarters of European respondents said they use alternative investments, but only one in 10 has more than a fifth of their clients allocating to them, and close to half report fewer than one client in 10 invested. Conviction is not the constraint: more than eight in 10 advisors described themselves as confident at selecting and allocating alternatives within client portfolios, the report said. The share of advisors planning to increase allocations to alternatives more than tripled this year, from 11 per cent in 2025 to 36 per cent, while the share planning to reduce allocations rose from 3 per cent to 16 per cent.

The hurdle advisors cited most often was a shortage of model portfolios for such assets.

The view from Asia
In its survey of financial professionals in Hong Kong and Singapore, iCapital found that among the 62 people it spoke to, allocation intentions rose sharply. Asian respondents also said risk analytics is their top technology priority. Demand for it rose 22 percentage points year-on-year to lead the region, displacing the transactional and CRM integrations that ranked highest in 2025.

Seven in 10 Asian advisors now use alternative investments, but the asset class only reaches a narrow share of their clients. More than half of those respondents reported that fewer than one in 10 clients invested in alternatives, and only 7 per cent said that more than one-fifth of their clients did so. This was the narrowest reach of any region surveyed.

Listed equities' rebound
Back with MSCI, the group found that the rebound in private equity came alongside an even stronger rally in listed equities, with the MSCI ACWI IMI Index returning 15.1 per cent in the second quarter of this year.

Another feature is that strength in public equities and venture capital has been "driven by an increasingly concentrated group of companies." At the end of June, the 10 largest constituents of the MSCI ACWI IMI accounted for about 26 per cent of index weight. Venture capital has moved towards a similar level: the 10 largest holdings in the MSCI Global Venture Capital Closed-End Fund Index represented 22 per cent of index value at the end of Q2.