Is Your Portfolio Missing Out? The Rise of Private Credit with Alona Gornick (Ep. 143)
Is private credit the hidden gem missing in your investment portfolio?
Explore the untapped potential of private credit in your investment portfolio with Larry Heller, CFP®, CDFA® and special guest Alona Gornick, Managing Director and Senior Investment Strategist at Churchill Asset Management. Together, they take us deep into the intricacies of private credit, a burgeoning asset class currently commanding a substantial $1.5 trillion in assets.
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Larry & Alona discuss:
- What is Private Credit, what advantages does it offer, and how it has experienced such growth
- Private Credit’s diversity such as, asset based lending, equipment finance, venture debt, and more
- The Investor Appeal to those seeking steady income and a buy-and-hold approach
- How innovative fund structures break down barriers, making private credit accessible to individual investors and opening new avenues for diversified portfolios
- And much more!
Connect with Alona Gornick:
Connect with Larry Heller:
- (631) 248-3600
- Schedule a 20-Minute Call
- Heller Wealth Management
- LinkedIn: Larry Heller, CFP®, CPA
- YouTube: Life Unlimited with Larry Heller, CFP®
About Alona Gornick:
Alona Gornick serves as a Managing Director, Senior Investment Strategist, and Co-Head of the Chicago Office for Churchill Asset Management. In her role, Alona provides meaningful investment insights across the private capital spectrum to the investment community, with a particular emphasis on the Private Wealth and Retail channel. She works closely with Nuveen’s global distribution team to deepen relationships with and educate Churchill’s investors and partners.
Alona also serves as Co-Head of Churchill’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council, where she collaborates on initiatives that prioritize inclusion and authenticity. She joined Churchill in 2017 as an Originator, developing relationships with leading private equity sponsors to source and structure high-quality deal flow for the platform. Alona has spent 14 years in various investment, capital markets and investor relations roles at leading organizations, including Nuveen (Churchill’s parent company), Golden Gate Capital, and Oaktree Capital Management.
Publishing Tags: Life Unlimited, Podcast, Retirement, Heller Wealth Management, Financial Planner, Portfolio Management, Investment Management, Personal Finance, Wealth Management, CFP, Certified Financial Planner, Financial Advisor, Long Island, New York, Investing For Women, Business Exit Planning, Business Strategies, Private Credit, Churchill Asset Management, Direct Lending, Asset Management, Financial Markets
**Additional Publishing Tags: Capital Markets, Investor Relations, Financial Risk Management, Portfolio Diversification, Business Development Companies, Financial Strategy, Economic Trends
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Voiceover: Welcome to the Life Unlimited Podcast with Larry Heller. You deserve complete financial advice so you can confidently live your life your way for life. Now let’s get into this week’s podcast episode.
[00:00:19] Matt Halloran: Hello and welcome to another Life Unlimited podcast with your host Larry Heller. Today we are talking about decoding private credit insights on the rising popularity of this investment with Alona Gornick.
[00:00:30] Matt Halloran: Now, real quick, a little bit about Alona. She’s the managing director and co-head of the Chicago office at Churchill Asset Management. She’s got 14 years of experience in investment capital markets and investor relations. She provides key investment insights across the private capital spectrum with a focus on private wealth and retail channels.
[00:00:48] Matt Halloran: Now before she, uh, was at Churchill in 2017, listen, she has been at a lot of very high profile places, Nuveen Golden Gate Capital and Oaktree Capital Management. And she also started her career in investment banking, uh, at Bank of America Security. So with that, Larry, take it away.
[00:01:04] Larry Heller: Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Alona.
[00:01:06] Larry Heller: Thank you so much for joining us today. I’m excited to give our audience a little bit more knowledge on private credit. So Alona, why don’t, why don’t we jump, jump right into this and what is private credit for those of you that don’t know.
[00:01:19] Alona Gornick: Sure. Larry, thanks so much for having me. For sure.
[00:01:22] Larry Heller: On this show. Let’s talk about private credit. what is it? Let’s just at least tackle the fact that it has seen tremendous [00:01:30] growth over the last 15 years, and I’d say even more of an accelerated spotlight in the last 15 months. It’s now approaching about a trillion and a half. dollars in assets under management.
[00:01:41] Alona Gornick: Certainly a, a core asset class, if you will, if you think about the high yield market being at over a trillion and the leveraged loan market being at over a trillion itself. So certainly competing with those two big asset classes. We’re all very, very familiar with think industry. Veterans here have expectations for this asset class, for private credit to double in five years and maybe even triple in 10.
[00:02:02] Alona Gornick: So certainly a lot of positive momentum and expectation for the asset class, but. What is it? I’d say private credit altogether. It’s very enormous and it’s very diverse. It encompasses a lot of sub-segments within it. direct lending certainly one of the largest and most active and fastest growing components of private credit.
[00:02:22] Alona Gornick: But inside of private credit, you also have. Mezzanine finance, you have distressed, you have special situations, you have asset-based lending, equipment finance, venture debt, real estate debt. So there’s all sorts of sub-segments within private credit that make it really interesting and unique. But ultimately, we do see various forms of collateral across all of these subsegments.
[00:02:45] Alona Gornick: You also see that, um, they can be secured or unsecured. Components of them. So very, very different. Very diverse. And typically what you have are borrowers who are too small to access the public [00:03:00] credit markets. So that’s what’s really happening here. or you do have some larger borrowers who’ve in fact now preferred the private credit market because of unique aspects like.
[00:03:10] Alona Gornick: Customization, flexibility and scale that we can get into later. As far as why is there now this sort of shift or interest to kind of come to this market, but if you just zero in on direct lending ’cause it is an area of expertise for Churchill and one that is the biggest and largest segment. I’d say direct lending at its core reflects more of, in its core a a financial obligation.
[00:03:32] Alona Gornick: That is privately and directly negotiated between a borrower and a lender or a group of lenders. Yeah. So there’s no readily available secondary market for it, and it typically attracts that buy and hold investor mentality.
[00:03:45] Larry Heller: Okay. So let, I wanna even take this down a even a little bit more basic for those, for those out there.
[00:03:50] Larry Heller: ’cause I think, most people out there know what cash is. They know what stocks are. They have uh, some idea about bonds, but private credit is. it’s kind of new. So to new to them. So first of all, kind of the, the word private and then the word credit in there. So can we even just, even just take a step back and explain the, really the basic of what somebody would be doing if they would be wanting to invest in private credit?
[00:04:17] Alona Gornick: Sure. So as someone interested in investing in private credit, what you’re essentially doing is looking for a manager. Right. Who has access to private [00:04:30] credit opportunities or deals? Right? And a deal here is really that financial obligation where there is a, borrower and a lender, and the manager that you’re looking to invest with will be on that lender side, right?
[00:04:45] Alona Gornick: We’ll be, be providing capital, in essence, a loan, a private loan to a borrower where there’s a contractual obligation to be paid back. Both your loan, your principal, and then interest along the way. So what’s really unique about private credit is that you actually have a current income generation sort of investment opportunity here when you are sitting in the seat of that lender.
[00:05:13] Alona Gornick: But here, in this case, as an investor looking to invest in private credit, you’re gonna kind of fall into the camp of that lender or a manager who is lending to that borrower.
[00:05:22] Larry Heller: So there are these companies out there that instead of going to a bank, are going to a pool of private investment. And this is where investors can, contribute money.
[00:05:32] Larry Heller: And then that money then would be deployed to these companies, instead of them going to a bank. Correct. Is that a basic way of kind of looking at it?
[00:05:41] Alona Gornick: Absolutely. So these companies, as we said just earlier, are typically a little too small to get the attention of a big traditional bank, a corporate bank, but they’re actually solidly generating profits, right?
[00:05:56] Alona Gornick: They’ve got really steady, you know, operating results and they [00:06:00] generate enough free cash flow to be an attractive. Investment opportunity for a direct or private lender to lend them that loan different from a bank. So they certainly have all of the attributes that you’re looking for, as a lender to a high quality bar, but they just happen to be too small.
[00:06:18] Alona Gornick: But they can be typically longstanding businesses around for generations, decades. just happen to be family owned and operated. Or very commonly what we see in our space is private equity backed, right. So private equity is interested in buying these small middle market or mid-size businesses and looking to private credit to help finance their purchase of that business.
[00:06:42] Larry Heller: Yeah. So let,
[00:06:43] Larry Heller: let’s talk about some of the advantages of kind of working with private credit manager as a, as a borrower. Like, why, why would somebody, wanna invest in private credit?
[00:06:52] Alona Gornick: So I’d say private credit’s got a few very unique attributes. Number one, you really can customize your loan here versus what you’ll typically see at a traditional bank that has to think about selling that loan in a traditional bank context to a broader market of public credit investors, right?
[00:07:13] Alona Gornick: So when you’re doing something on the private side, you really can customize the tenor of the loan. You can really think about sizing and, covenants and baskets and everything around that, loan to the borrower in a unique way for that borrower’s business needs. And also its [00:07:30] growth plans.
[00:07:30] Alona Gornick: To the extent that it actually wants to pursue a very acquisitive growth strategy, it can build in features and functionality to do that. I’d say second, you do tend to see longer maturity profiles available in private credit than what are typically standard shorter, maturity profiles in traditional banking.
[00:07:49] Alona Gornick: So that’s another area of flexibility. And then third, I’d say there’s a really unique aspect of what I’ll call. Delayed draw term loans. So you can pay for a commitment today as far as a smaller fee, but draw it over time for a set period of time. You don’t really typically see that in the traditional banking world with big public credit.
[00:08:11] Alona Gornick: Um, so that’s a very nice feature that a lot of these growth oriented. Small mid-size businesses are looking to do when they want to buy other businesses, grow inorganically and have the assistance of debt financing to do that. So that delayed job term loan, features there. And then finally, I’d say speed efficiency, sort of this really certainty around execution where you can actually get your deal done.
[00:08:36] Alona Gornick: In the private credit space without concern about a window being open in the public credit market, right? Is the timing right? Is there headline risk happening out there? Will that window shut that I have to pull my deal down? That is not the case in private credit. You certainly have very big private credit managers nowadays scaled, willing and able to do the entirety of a [00:09:00] financing and take a lot of the execution risk.
[00:09:03] Alona Gornick: Off the table. So if you can get that speed, certainty and execution, plus customization, plus flexibility plus longer maturity profiles, I think it really serves to be a very, very attractive, alternative to traditional lending.
[00:09:17] Larry Heller: Yeah. So let, let’s talk, you mentioned the word risk a few times, so you know, what is the risk in these private credit people maybe sitting out there?
[00:09:24] Larry Heller: Well, lending money to a private, midsize. Company. so what are the risks in involved, uh, and why would somebody want to do this?
[00:09:35] Alona Gornick: Certainly, well, with any investment, you’re gonna take some risk, right? And what you try to do with direct lending, private credit, and direct lending in particular is really mitigate as much of that risk as possible.
[00:09:46] Alona Gornick: But to the extent your question is, what risks do we typically try to identify and navigate around? There certainly will be risk that the borrower is not able to pay you back your loan. Right. And when? When does that situation occur? Would be, if the borrower were to have a massive reduction in its revenue or a massive increase in expenses such that its profitability is deteriorating, weakened, it collapses and it can no longer generate free cash flow to then pay back the interest on the loan and the loan itself.
[00:10:20] Alona Gornick: that’s a risk that any direct lender takes. So what do I mean by navigating that risk? What it comes down to is really just, hardcore underwriting, [00:10:30] right? Really understanding what is this borrower’s business model, you know, what is its competitive landscape? how resilient is it through good and bad times?
[00:10:41] Alona Gornick: Did it get through, um, the Covid pandemic era? on the positive side out of that, what did it change about its business model? How, how resilient is it through inflationary pressure as we’re seeing today, and certainly. That are much higher today than they were before. So these are all risks that you have to really look for and navigate around.
[00:11:00] Alona Gornick: And when I say navigate, what you really wanna do is you have to ask the questions. You have to do your due diligence. You have to understand how does this business and its management team really own and control these risks and what’s the right and appropriate level of, balance sheet and debt financing that you would put on it.
[00:11:17] Alona Gornick: So really wanting to put the right type of capital structure in place so that it isn’t, excessively
[00:11:22] Alona Gornick: aggressive.
[00:11:23] Larry Heller: Right. And you talk about management. First of all, you know if, if you’re investing in private credit, you’re not investing in one or two, making one or two loans. This is a pool of hundreds of different types of, of loans out there.
[00:11:34] Larry Heller: And then you’re hiring a firm to make sure and to minimize the, mitigate the risk by making the right selections of the loan. So why don’t we just kind of, pair back and talk a little bit about Churchill and why Churchill and how does Churchill get involved in ways of mitigating the, mitigating the risk?
[00:11:50] Alona Gornick: So from a portfolio perspective, you’re absolutely right. I’d say a hallmark for Churchill would be extreme diversification. So as I said at the outset with private credit, [00:12:00] there isn’t a readily available secondary market. So we are buy and hold investors. We’re relationship lenders. We’re really thinking about investing through a cycle.
[00:12:09] Alona Gornick: We know things can go wrong, so what do we do to mitigate that risk? We try to develop. As diverse of a portfolio of investments as we can. Right. So with Churchill, who are we today we’re a, $47 billion senior lending, junior lending and private equity co-investment platform. So altogether a private capital platform, where we have a dedicated focus to the core US middle market in terms of the, the borrowers or the companies that we’re lending to.
[00:12:38] Alona Gornick: And we do this, by working with. Private equity firms a hundred percent to work through financing opportunities where we can be their partner. So it’s essentially what, what Churchill’s doing. And when we think about mitigating risk across our platform of investment strategies, we are trying to build as much of a deal funnel as possible.
[00:12:58] Alona Gornick: So that means really seeing the market of private credit deal opportunities, sourcing as many high quality opportunities as we can. Through our private equity sponsor relationships and then narrowing down to the best of the best, right? Just the companies that we think have solid operating history will be able to withstand, cycles and then putting in the best and most conservative structures, very disciplined, for what we see as the appropriate type of balance sheet, for these businesses today.
[00:13:28] Alona Gornick: So I’d say from a [00:13:30] standpoint of. The types of loans we’re doing. Consistently conservative, very disciplined, very tight in terms of pass rates. So we are sourcing about a thousand deals a year. Certainly have to see a lot to get through all of that. And then closing on just five to 6% of those. So really tight, high bar for us.
[00:13:51] Alona Gornick: In terms of what we’ll actually transact on, but still at the same time, have a very massive portfolio of highly diverse borrowers. Not only in the position size that we take, which is one half of 1% is our average position size. So highly diverse in terms of number of positions, but also the industries, right?
[00:14:10] Alona Gornick: Very diverse. In terms of industry exposure, I’d say our top three would be business services, healthcare services. And then tech, tech enabled, so very asset light, low capital intensity, high free cash flow generators.
[00:14:23] Larry Heller: And you mentioned Churchill. A lot of people may not have heard of Churchill, but why don’t you tell, tell our audience who the parent company is of Churchill.
[00:14:30] Larry Heller: They may have heard of them.
[00:14:31] Alona Gornick: Sure. So Churchill itself was founded in 2006, and then we were acquired, 2015 by TIAA, through its investment arm, which, uh, is referred to as Nuveen. It’s a trillion dollar investment management business. So we sit as. TIAA’s dedicated private capital platform. They could have picked any manager to manage private capital for them and they picked Churchill.
[00:14:56] Alona Gornick: So we take that very importantly as far as when we think about [00:15:00] investment philosophy and we invest on behalf of TIA A, which is one of the largest global debt investors, focused on, on private debt. So we’re doing that on their behalf and. They are our largest client today. of our 47 billion, they represent about half of that, and they are year in, year out.
[00:15:20] Alona Gornick: Putting in about four to $5 billion towards Churchill’s investment strategies. So certainly a fantastic alignment of interest when it comes to sourcing deal flow for an institution of that caliber. And then allocating that same institutional quality deal to our third party investors, which we invest on behalf of.
[00:15:40] Alona Gornick: So everyone’s on the same footing.
[00:15:42] Larry Heller: Right. So, you know, some of this private credit, I, I guess might’ve, a lot of it might’ve started way back when, you know, in 2008 when the bank said a little bit more restrictions to it. So why don’t you kind of explain and tell us how is the role of banks evolving these days?
[00:15:58] Alona Gornick: So 2008, you’re absolutely right. We did see a massive pullback on the traditional banking system in terms of providing these middle market type loans and really paved the way for, direct lenders like a Churchill to kind of create new opportunity to be that replacement capital, if you will. So you saw this.
[00:16:19] Alona Gornick: Really huge surge from 2009 to today. I’d say on an annual basis, average growth at 14% in private credit alone. Certainly really seeing that [00:16:30] replacement capital take hold, plus a really big push in a search for yield when what used to be a very low rate environment. Zero to to to 1%. So a lot of investor interest in finding that premium.
[00:16:43] Alona Gornick: For private credit or illiquidity premium, and then certainly borrowers who were looking for that flexibility and customization that we talked about earlier. So those three combined together really pushed a lot of growth to what we’ve seen over the last 15 years, to now this one and a half trillion dollars, you know, asset asset class.
[00:16:59] Alona Gornick: But what’s happening today? So now we’ve actually seen, you know, earlier this year. A lot of turbulence in the traditional banking sector. Maybe more so now in that regional smaller banking space. A bit of a repeat in terms of capital retrenchment, more capital constraint, and a lot more, uh, judicious sort of lending.
[00:17:20] Alona Gornick: As far as what these regional, smaller banks are willing to do, for many mid-size companies. So it’s really creating a lot more opportunity for non-bank lenders to step in once again and really pave the way for more of a market share take, if you will, of direct lending from the syndicated loan market.
[00:17:39] Alona Gornick: I’d say second with banks, what they have also been doing is kind of moving into a different role with getting that private credit exposure. previously when they were, arranging these loans and selling them out, since they’re doing less of that right now, they found ways to be a bit more involved from a fund finance perspective.
[00:17:58] Alona Gornick: So if they wanna get exposure to [00:18:00] private equity and private credit, they may now have moved into ways where they can lend to an actual private credit fund. Get the exposure that way or provide NAV level financing. So those are different ways that they’re getting involved, but certainly not as, as involved as they were before.
[00:18:17] Alona Gornick: I’d say this market share take is now looking like about approaching 85%. I. Of the syndicated, loan market has now moved into direct lending, versus the syndicated loan market for LBOs leveraged buyouts. So certainly a huge part of the market is now being done. private credit is being done in direct lending.
[00:18:36] Alona Gornick: I.
[00:18:36] Larry Heller: And, and speaking of the market, I mean, kind of the, the buzzword these days is, you know, is private credit or, uh, you know, are we in the golden age of, you know, private credit and kind of what is driving that? And you know, do you agree or disagree or is there so much money coming into private credit this day?
[00:18:55] Larry Heller: Should we be worried or a new investor be worried that there’s not gonna be enough opportunities? Why don’t you, elaborate a little bit on that?
[00:19:02] Alona Gornick: Sure. There’s definitely been a lot of talk about the golden age or this golden moment, and I’d say this may be one of the most attractive in investment environments we’ve seen in recent history for private credit, but I’d say it’s because of a combination of a few things that are all happening at the same time, which we haven’t really seen before.
[00:19:24] Alona Gornick: So number one, that’s higher yields, right? Number two. Higher [00:19:30] quality businesses and anything transacting, a certainly has to prove about higher quality. And number three, better protections for investors really reflecting a an investor or a lender friendly market. Versus what had been a borrower friendly market for more than a decade.
[00:19:47] Alona Gornick: And number four, really better structural tailwinds as we talked about the role of banks sort of leaving the space. So a combination of those four things happening all at once is really interesting for private credit, where you’re now seeing yields at almost 12% for senior secured, top of the capital structure, first in line of repayment.
[00:20:11] Alona Gornick: Loans, which is compared to what used to be six to 7% just a year and a half ago. So we’re now basically nearly double in terms of a yield perspective of what we’re seeing in the asset class. Yeah. But when you combine that with higher quality businesses, I mean, you’re not saying higher yield with higher risk necessarily on the underlying business risk.
[00:20:33] Alona Gornick: Right. The only types of deals that are getting done today are those businesses that can prove out. Operating resilience, recession resilience, the ability to pass through price increases, you know, given the environment we’ve been in. So they have to be a plus assets to transact in this environment and certainly because of the broader capital scarcity we’ve got, lenders are now pursuing much better.
[00:20:56] Alona Gornick: Protections for their investors, right? We want very [00:21:00] conservative balance sheets. We want very low leverage. We want a lot of equity, contribution, and cushion in these businesses. So yes, I think it’s a really unique and compelling time right now. it’s been probably only the third time we’ve seen private credit and double digit.
[00:21:14] Alona Gornick: Yield arena. It isn’t necessarily an asset class that lives in this space, so certainly is there, but could this be sustained a little bit longer than the last two times we saw the double digit yield arena? Perhaps we may be in that higher for longer environment. but to your question about crowding, you know, is it, have I missed the opportunity?
[00:21:35] Alona Gornick: I’d say for that two things. number one. The middle market, these businesses that are coming and pursuing private credit loans, it’s enormous. There are over 200,000 businesses considered middle market, you know, private businesses that compares to public companies. There’s maybe four or 5,000 of them, right?
[00:21:57] Alona Gornick: So think about the number of businesses out there that any point in time if they were bought by a private equity firm. That would then use private credit to assist that buyout. That’s a deal, right? Guess how many of those 200,000 businesses are private equity owned today?
[00:22:13] Larry Heller: Hmm. 10%.
[00:22:15] Alona Gornick: You’re close 5%. Only 5% of 200,000 businesses have private equity backing.
[00:22:22] Alona Gornick: That’s enormous. White space, right? For private credit. Who’s sitting on a bunch of dry powder right now to [00:22:30] buy, right, to continue buying these businesses. And every dollar they put to work means a dollar of private debt that could be put to work. So all in all I’m trying to tell you is that, you know, private credit has an enormous backdrop of the middle market, which I think is vast.
[00:22:45] Alona Gornick: So to the extent more market entrants come in, right, everyone’s excited about these yields, these higher quality companies, better protections. I still think there’s. phenomenal supply of deal flow out there. It’s just a matter of unlocking those deals. Right, right. It’s just a matter of seeing private equity get back in the game and start pursuing those deals.
[00:23:04] Larry Heller: Yeah, I do wanna just address that. We’re, we’re, recording this podcast the end of November. So those rates of returns are current, you know, current yields, they’re not guaranteed. And each deal is, is, is different. And if anybody, we’ll talk about at the end of the podcast, but if anyone. To get a full description and full perspectives on any of the, the deals through, through Churchill.
[00:23:24] Larry Heller: They can reach out, they can reach out to us. So, Alona, before we continue, we’re gonna take a little bit break from our podcast, for a special offer for our listeners.
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[00:24:45] Larry Heller: so a a as we kind of, you know, you know, talk about some of the success, you know, in, and we talked about actually selecting the, the deals or, making sure that, so you’re minimizing the risk, but you know, how does kind of managers further differentiate themselves and, you know, create value between one private credit manager and another private credit manager?
[00:25:08] Alona Gornick: I’d say rigorous underwriting, strong portfolio management, really, you know, impeccable track records. Those are all table stakes, right? You have to have those three to even be considered a private credit portfolio of, of your portfolio. So I think that’s essential for every manager to, to show that if you’re, you’re being considered, [00:25:30] but.
[00:25:31] Alona Gornick: What I think about when, in terms of real differentiation, really adding value, you’ve gotta think about, what is a manager really doing for me as an investor that’s different from the other managers I just heard about? And one thing that comes to mind that I think is an area of potential differentiation is how does that manager source its deal flow?
[00:25:51] Alona Gornick: Right. Because at the end of the day, since we are all buy and hold investors, I say deal flow drives performance. Right? If you don’t have that deal flow at origination, right, you can’t source that deal. you’re not involved in that dialogue in the beginning. There’s no way for you to build a position in the secondary market to get there, That deal’s done and it’s done without you. So do you as a manager. Have a unique sourcing strategy or an advantage or a model that’s different from everybody else. I think that’s a really interesting area of opportunity to add value as a manager. So it’s about, it’s about advisors asking those questions, right?
[00:26:30] Alona Gornick: Really how do you differentiate yourself? Because if you don’t have a unique sourcing strategy and you’re sort of just doing any deal that walks in the door. I don’t care if you have fantastic underwriting, right? Fantastic Structuring, really great portfolio management. You’re really only going to be able to do the deals that you have access to, and at that point in time, if you don’t have access to a lot of deals, you may be inclined to do that deal that came in the door.
[00:26:55] Alona Gornick: you don’t have the ability to be selective. I think really creating that top of the funnel [00:27:00] and generating as much deal flow as possible so you can stay disciplined and pick that best of the best will really prove out ultimately, uh, true performance for managers.
[00:27:08] Larry Heller: Right. You know, and a lot of investors, you know, just learning really about private credit because historically only institutions were able to allocate money to private.
[00:27:17] Larry Heller: You know, private credit. So, you know, that’s changed. So how are individuals investors able to access private credit opportunities today and, you know, how, how is that gonna affect the industry?
[00:27:28] Alona Gornick: So finally, we’ve got private credit, far more accessible than ever before to this wealth community through a variety of innovative new products.
[00:27:38] Alona Gornick: The initial growth, as you had just mentioned, had really been made up of institutional investors, right? They could meet the higher minimums, and they were comfortable with very long lockup periods. So what’s happened now is private credit managers have since evolved to create new fund structures. To reach a wider audience, right?
[00:27:57] Alona Gornick: We’ve got feeder funds, registered funds, interval funds, business development companies, or BDCs to name a few. And specifically with regards to BDCs, these are investment vehicles that provide capital to growing private companies. They’re really designed to provide retail investors access to institutional quality private investment products, so really, really great in terms of fitting private credit.
[00:28:25] Alona Gornick: As far as an investment strategy into these BDCs, there are many flavors of [00:28:30] BDCs. There are publicly traded BDCs out there that you can gain access to. They’re private to public BDCs, so they’re going to be in transition. Then there are these perpetually non-traded BDCs. So there will never be that public component, but they offer liquidity, in very different ways.
[00:28:47] Alona Gornick: But altogether, what these fund structures that have offered are very low minimums, you know, really flexible liquidity features, simplified tax reporting, far more simple than institutional funds. So really trying to make that accessibility available to, individual investors. I’d say finally on BDCs.
[00:29:07] Alona Gornick: These are yield oriented vehicles, They’re typically required to distribute 90 to 98% of their profits, so really well suited for that private credit investment where we are generating steady interest income from those loans. That we make, and a diversified portfolio of those loans. So the BDC landscape has certainly exploded over the last two years.
[00:29:31] Alona Gornick: I think there’s, call it 20 or more in registration process right now. So certainly a big area for, added access to the private credit universe for individual investors today.
[00:29:43] Larry Heller: Okay, Alona, this has been, this has been great. I know audience has learned a lot about private credit and any final words you’d like to mention today?
[00:29:52] Alona Gornick: Sure. Well certainly really thankful for the opportunity to chat through one of my favorite topics. Private credit. [00:30:00] I think it certainly is experiencing quite a golden moment, but sometimes when we talk about golden moments or a golden age, it can feel like it may end. But I do think there are some really interesting structural tailwinds, as we talked about earlier, that would suggest that there is significant and sustainable demand.
[00:30:20] Alona Gornick: For this asset class to continue growing. I’d love for folks to get involved, get more exposure, really diversify their portfolios with private credit and certainly with Churchill. To the extent we can be helpful, we’d be happy to.
[00:30:33] Larry Heller: Yeah. Anyone who wants some more information and wants to talk to me about, private credit, you can reach out to me at, hello wealth management.com and just, select a, uh, 20 minute call with me or just call the office at (631) 248-3600.
[00:30:47] Matt Halloran: Lot of great information there and one of the rigorous things about the Life Unlimited Podcast is that we are trying to consistently bring you great ideas and new ideas that you might not normally be exposed to. And Alona did a great job with that today talking about. Decoding private credit. Listen, uh, if you have not liked and subscribed to the show, please make sure that you do that.
[00:31:07] Matt Halloran: And if you know somebody who’s looking for another way to go ahead and invest their money, please make sure that you share this podcast with them and make sure that they reach out to Larry at Heller Wealth Management. So for Larry and Alona, this is Matt Haller, and we’ll see on the other side of the mic very soon.