Good morning, {{First Name}}! It’s Wednesday, and the growth map is shifting. Emerging markets are pulling away in insurance, private equity returns are putting a premium on manager selection, and CRE’s exit window is reopening—just with a much sharper filter.
Plus, we look at whether investors are being overpaid for emerging-market currency risk and why separating price from volume matters more than ever in diligence.
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Join PE150 and Caplink for our AI & Data Insight Breakfast in London. Register here.
DATA DIVE
The Growth Map Is Moving
Stat: Emerging market life insurance premiums grew 7.2% in real terms in 2024, versus just 1.5% in advanced economies. The gap persists in 2025, with emerging markets growing 5.7% compared with 1.5% in developed markets.
Context: The divergence reflects more than faster GDP growth. Emerging markets are expanding the insured population itself as incomes rise, assets accumulate, financial systems deepen, and digital distribution reaches customers traditional channels could not serve. That runway is enormous: the global insurance protection gap is 65%, rising to 92% in Asia, 96% in Africa, and 97% in the Middle East.
Strategic Takeaway: For PE, the cleaner bet may sit outside the carrier balance sheet. Brokers, MGAs, policy administration, claims technology, analytics, and digital distribution can capture rising premium volumes without taking equivalent underwriting risk. The opportunity is not simply finding the biggest protection gap. It is finding the platforms that can close it profitably.
TREND TO WATCH
Manager Selection Is the New Asset Allocation
Private markets are not just offering different returns. They are creating a much wider gap between winners and losers.
J.P. Morgan data shows private equity managers ranging from 1.3% at the 25th percentile to 20.5% at the 75th percentile, the widest dispersion among the asset classes shown. Venture capital is similarly unforgiving, spanning negative 2.7% to 16.3%. By comparison, large cap equities sit in a much tighter 8.5% to 11.4% range.
That changes the allocator playbook. In public markets, getting the asset class right can do much of the heavy lifting. In private equity, selecting the wrong manager can overwhelm the benefits of selecting the right asset class.
For LPs, access, diligence, and manager selection are becoming increasingly important sources of portfolio performance. For GPs, the dispersion raises the stakes around demonstrating repeatable sourcing and value creation.
Bottom line: Private equity may offer attractive returns, but the real alpha increasingly sits in choosing who manages the capital. (More)
You’re invited: Where AI Meets Private Equity
Artificial intelligence has moved beyond experimentation. The real question for private equity firms is no longer whether to adopt AI, but how to turn it into measurable value across the investment lifecycle.
On November 18, PE150 and CapLink Group will host the AI / Data & Insight Private Capital Breakfast, an invitation-only gathering at London's May Fair Hotel that will bring together operating partners, deal teams, portfolio executives, and technology leaders to discuss what AI adoption actually looks like inside private equity.
The morning will feature three practitioner-led discussions:
AI Into Value Creation — How leading firms are transforming AI from dashboards into repeatable value creation playbooks across portfolio companies.
AI Across the Investment Lifecycle — Practical applications spanning sourcing, due diligence, investment decisions, and portfolio management.
Building the AI-Enabled Private Equity Firm — The operating models, data strategies, and organizational capabilities required to scale AI successfully.
Interested in attending? Register or request the full agenda here.
Interested in sponsoring? Email [email protected]
DILIGENCE CORNER BY 150 DILIGENCE
Is the Market Growing, or Is Inflation Doing the Work?
A market growing 8% a year sounds attractive. But the number that matters in diligence is how much of that growth actually came from customers buying more.
For investors, headline market growth should be broken into four pieces: price, volume, mix, and M&A. If most growth comes from price increases, underlying demand may be far weaker than the topline suggests. That becomes especially important when underwriting assumes historical growth continues.
The diligence question is simple: if pricing stopped tomorrow, what would the market’s growth rate look like?
That answer can change the investment case. Volume driven growth can signal expanding demand and a larger addressable market. Price driven growth may instead leave a business exposed to customer resistance, competitive discounting, or slower growth once inflation normalizes.
For PE investors, separating nominal growth from real demand helps prevent yesterday’s inflation from becoming tomorrow’s revenue assumption. (More)
LIQUIDITY CORNER
The Exit Window Is Open — Just Narrower
US commercial real estate M&A is no longer frozen, but liquidity is still highly selective. Deal value fell from $332B in 2021 to $43B in 2025, while deal count collapsed from 3.7K to just 0.3K. The message is less “no capital” than “no easy exits.”
Deloitte’s 2026 outlook points to the same dynamic: capital remains abundant, refinancing timelines are shortening, and investors are increasingly accepting today’s rate environment as the new normal. But valuation gaps and financing uncertainty continue to delay transactions.
For PE, that creates a different liquidity game. The opportunity is increasingly concentrated in high-conviction, opportunistic transactions, rather than broad-based deal activity. Sellers who need liquidity may have to accept today’s pricing reality, while buyers with capital and patience can pick their spots.
Bottom line: liquidity is returning to CRE—but it’s being allocated with a much sharper filter.
MACROVIEW
Are Investors Being Overpaid for Emerging-Market Currency Risk?
Emerging-market currencies are supposed to compensate investors for depreciation risk. But what if that compensation has consistently been too generous?
ODI Global finds that across 34 low- and lower-middle-income currencies, local interest rates combined with exchange-rate movements have generated substantial excess returns over US funding costs since 2000. Africa has been particularly striking, with cumulative returns more than doubling despite repeated currency crises and sharp devaluations.
Hungary offers a timely example. The forint rallied sharply over the past year while 10-year government yields fell from above 7% toward 5%, giving foreign investors a powerful combination of carry, bond-price appreciation and FX gains.
But an IMF study complicates the mispricing argument. Emerging-market currencies often depreciate precisely during global stress, while dollar-denominated debt can amplify the economic damage. Investors may therefore be earning a premium not for average depreciation, but for absorbing losses when capital is most valuable.
The question isn't whether emerging-market currencies are risky. It's whether investors are being overpaid to take that risk. (More)
