Bloomberg Intelligence's fall 2026 survey finds private credit demand holding firm even as investor caution rises on spreads and retail flows
Private credit is still growing, but the market is maturing in ways that should give financial advisors and their clients pause.
Bloomberg Intelligence's fifth semi-annual private credit survey, authored by analysts Paul Gulberg, David Havens and Michael Kaye, surveyed 150 finance professionals between September 14 and 29, 2026, and found durable demand sitting alongside a sharpening divide between optimists and skeptics - a split that falls squarely along the lines of who manages the money and who allocates it.
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Demand is holding - but the cracks are showing
According to the survey 72% of respondents expect private credit deployment to increase over the next 12 months, and 66% anticipate institutional fundraising to rise over the same period. Nearly 80% expect the asset class to deliver returns that match or exceed historical levels - historically around 9–10% gross, unlevered annualized for direct lending.
But look beneath those top-line numbers and a different picture emerges. Investors and limited partners (LPs) are considerably more cautious than the fund managers and lenders who run the products.
Twelve percent of investors now expect deployment to decline, up from zero in the April 2026 survey, while only 18% of investors expect a significant increase in deployment, compared with 28% of fund managers.
On spread premiums, 56% of investors now expect returns of 100 basis points or less over broadly syndicated loans - up sharply from 20% six months prior. Fund managers moved in the opposite direction, with 78% expecting premiums of 200 basis points or more.
"Investors and limited partners are generally more cautious than fund managers and lenders, particularly on deployment, spreads and the duration of the wealth-flow slowdown," the Bloomberg Intelligence report states, citing findings from its survey.
For financial advisors positioning client portfolios in private credit, this divergence is worth watching closely. The people with the most at stake (the LPs) are increasingly skeptical that current valuations and spread premiums are sustainable.
The retail channel: resilient but not immune
Despite negative headlines around retail redemptions, the survey found that 57% of respondents expect wealth and retail allocations to private credit to increase over the next 12 months.
Only 12% expect a decrease. Banks and lenders led the optimism, with approximately 60% expecting retail allocations to rise, followed by fund managers at 58% and investors at 54%.
Yet even this relatively rosy picture carries a caveat. According to the Bloomberg Intelligence survey, 62% of respondents believe the current retail wealth-flow slowdown will be temporary (resolved within a year), up from 58% in April 2026.
But investors broke sharply from that consensus: 52% of investor respondents now expect a multiyear or structural slowdown, up from 34% just six months ago. For advisors helping clients evaluate liquidity expectations in private credit vehicles, that is a meaningful signal.
Asset-backed finance is leading the next phase
If there is a clear area of convergence among survey participants, it is asset-backed finance (ABF).
Bloomberg Intelligence found that 38% of respondents identified ABF as the greatest emerging opportunity in private credit, up from 29% approximately six months earlier. Managers, lenders and investors all ranked ABF first across their respective cohorts.
The survey also found that respondents across North America, Europe and Asia project that private credit could replace approximately 15% of traditional fixed-income investment over the medium term, with ABF leading that displacement at around 20%.
Structured transactions tied to insurance-related assets and data center funding were cited as supporting ABF momentum, a theme that connects directly to the survey's other major finding.
Read next: Canada lends $500 billion to a private credit boom it never joined at home
Private credit and the AI infrastructure bet
According to the report, private capital (predominantly credit) could fund $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion of the AI infrastructure build-out over the next five years, based on Bloomberg Intelligence's Data Center Model, which estimates total AI infrastructure spending of approximately $9 trillion over that period.
About 41% of respondents identified AI and data-center financing as a meaningful opportunity over the next three to five years, though concentrated among the largest managers - firms like Blackstone, Apollo and Ares, as the report notes.
The survey found that power generation and transmission infrastructure was seen as the primary lending opportunity by 37% of respondents, ahead of compute and GPU financing.
While the AI infrastructure opportunity may be real, the survey data suggests it will accrue primarily to the largest platforms.
Risks: banks, defaults and valuation marks
On risk, the survey flagged bank competition as a fast-rising concern. In the April 2026 survey, just 1% of respondents identified bank competition as the biggest risk to private credit growth.
By the September 2026 survey, that figure had jumped to 20%, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. Credit quality deterioration (28%) and macroeconomic and rate instability (21%) ranked higher, but the re-emergence of bank appetite for corporate lending is a structural shift worth monitoring.
On defaults, respondents took a relatively contained view: 70% expect private credit default rates would climb to 5–10% in a serious economic downturn, with 39% coalescing around a 5–8% range. Those expecting defaults of 5% or less declined to 15% from 20% in the prior survey.
Valuation confidence has also improved markedly. Bloomberg Intelligence found that 53% of respondents now view private credit marks as consistent with underlying value - including 19% who believe marks are actually understated. That is a dramatic reversal from April 2026, when 72% viewed marks as overstated to varying degrees.
The bottom line for advisors
The Bloomberg Intelligence Fall 2026 Private Credit Survey points to an asset class that remains institutionally supported and structurally growing, but one where investor-level caution is building.
The gap between how fund managers and investors see spreads, deployment and the duration of the retail slowdown is widening — and that divergence is the most important signal in this report for advisors and their clients to track in the months ahead.
Source: Bloomberg Intelligence, "BI Survey: Private Credit, Fall 2026: Durable Demand," published October 19, 2026. Survey conducted September 14–29, 2026, with 150 respondents. Authors: Paul Gulberg, David Havens, Michael Kaye.
