Home Insights Fixed income Private credit: A structural source of lending stability and growth
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Credit availability is often one of the first casualties when uncertainty rises. Traditional sources of financing—public credit markets and banks—tend to retrench during periods of volatility, amplifying stress on the broader economy. The April “Liberation Day” tariff announcements were a recent reminder: public markets sold off, spreads widened, and credit issuance faltered, leaving many businesses with fewer funding options.

Private credit, however, demonstrated a different dynamic. Although activity slowed alongside broader markets, lending remained comparatively resilient. Most private credit lenders adjusted terms only modestly, and the market saw less severe repricing than its public counterpart. In fact, the relative stability of private credit encouraged some borrowers to shift away from public markets, underscoring the asset class’s growing relevance as a complementary source of financing across market environments.

This contrast is central to private credit’s growing importance. Today’s macro environment remains unsettled—characterized by trade frictions, geopolitical risks, questions around monetary policy credibility, and fiscal sustainability concerns. Such pressures will likely sustain volatility in public credit markets and constrain traditional bank lending. Against this backdrop, the structural features of private credit—ample dry powder, lower cyclical sensitivity, and direct lender–borrower relationships—position it to act as a stabilizer, supporting quality businesses, particularly small and mid-sized enterprises, with tailored financing solutions throughout the cycle.

Dissecting the sources of credit supply

During times of normal economic conditions, businesses usually have access to a broad spectrum of financing, which helps facilitate capital investment, job growth, and balance sheet resilience. Traditional sources of credit like public credit markets and bank lending are typically very sensitive to cyclical conditions, and as economic stress picks up, they are likely to either pull back lending activity or tighten conditions dramatically as credit spreads widen.

For public credit, this is largely driven by its more fluid capital base, which itself is a function of its liquidity as corporate bonds can be easily traded on secondary markets. Meanwhile, banks must manage around strict capital cost considerations and regulatory scrutiny, making them highly risk-averse to negative market shocks.

In the context of a volatile economic environment, this, in effect, exacerbates macro pressures as the cost or access to credit from these traditional sources becomes increasingly challenged when it is needed the most.

While these traditional sources continue to play an important part in financing activity, the credit landscape has drastically shifted since the Global Financial Crisis. Tighter regulations and more onerous capital requirements since then have led to a pullback in bank lending appetite—coinciding with a nearly 50% drop in the number of banking institutions since 2003—with the remaining banks positioning their balance sheets away from commercial and industrial lending activity.

As a result, more importance has been placed on alternative sources such as private credit, which saw its share of total debt outstanding to the U.S. corporate sector grow from only 2% in 2003 to 6% in 2023. The secular decline in bank lending has also been particularly acute for smaller businesses who have historically relied solely on banks as a source of credit.

Structural factors benefiting private credit

Private credit is privately originated corporate lending that takes place outside public markets or the traditional banking system. It occurs directly between private investors (the lenders) and businesses (the borrowers) and is highly illiquid.

While private credit as a whole is not completely immune to a riskier macro backdrop, it benefits investors by being less cyclically sensitive. Unlike public markets, which tend to have greater exposure to highly levered borrowers, private credit lending activity is more skewed toward higher quality and lower leveraged firms, with smaller exposures to highly cyclical sectors like consumer discretionary or energy.

Risks are also less uniformly distributed across the asset class, owing to several structural factors. These factors not only enhance stability during periods of stress, but also support more consistent credit delivery across the entire economic cycle.

  1. Limited burden to mark-to-market factors: Public credit markets are subject to rapidly shifting market sentiment and technical or flow backdrop, leaving it open to potentially large swings in price. Moreover, given the pricing transparency and inherent liquidity of public credit, it is also likely to be more actively traded than private credit. In times of market stress, this could exacerbate public credit price volatility as its liquid nature means lenders may sell these assets first to generate any needed portfolio liquidity. By contrast, owing to its illiquid nature, private credit spreads are not as sensitive to swings in market sentiment and exhibit much less periodic volatility compared to public credit markets. Its floating rate structure and generally higher coupon rates also help better insulate it from volatility due to rapidly changing market interest rates or spreads.
  1. Long-term capital base: Given the lack of liquidity within the asset class, the investor base for private credit tends to be stickier compared to traditional alternatives. With private credit investments usually held through maturity, this means major investors in this space, including insurance, pension funds, or family offices, tend to have a longer investment horizon when deploying capital into the market. Redemption risk is also limited as many private credit funds also employ gating mechanisms or lock-up periods to ensure investor capital remains deployed in the market. Moreover, the ample amount of so-called “dry powder,” or lender capital that has yet to be deployed to borrowers, suggests that private credit is also poised to act as a strategic source of credit for lenders taking advantage of market dislocations.
  1. Flexible loan terms: The private credit market often does not have a single standard when it comes to lending, and both lenders and borrowers typically negotiate directly to agree on terms. This means that, unlike traditional bank lending or public credit markets, both parties often come to a more bespoke set of loan terms, allowing for customization around interest rates, repayment schedules, and collateral requirements. This typically leads to faster deployment of capital and financing solutions even in unique market environments. Because private credit lenders are also more focused on allowing targeted business growth and ensuring ongoing business viability, this flexibility allows borrowers to work directly with lenders to address any near-term liquidity challenges.

Navigating a heightened macro risk environment

While these structural forces benefit private credit especially during negative market conditions, given the elevated uncertainty facing the macro environment, the private credit space is not completely immune to systemic or financial market-wide risks that could potentially emerge.

Opacity
Because private credit operates outside the traditional banking system, it is harder to monitor for emerging risks—especially those related to leverage, the practice of borrowing additional money to increase lending capacity and enhance investor returns. If this borrowing grows too high without oversight, it can lead to the risk of losses becoming magnified if credit conditions sour. Yet, this risk appears exaggerated, at least for now. While certain private credit funds do utilize banks as a source of leverage, the practice is not evenly distributed across the market, and is instead skewed heavily toward publicly traded Business Development Companies (BDCs). These entities typically lend to larger companies and are structured to employ leverage to enhance returns.

BDCs make up less than a fifth of the total private credit market, yet they account for the lion’s share of all leverage activity. Even within this segment, however, leverage levels are not necessarily problematic. Indeed, they have been roughly stable over time, with the amount of loans banks extended to BDCs making up around 5-10% of total private credit debt since 2013. The structure of these loans also suggests that liquidity is by far the primary use of leverage, with revolving lines of credit making up about 80% of total bank loans to this segment.

Defaults
Private credit lenders typically have a higher pain threshold relative to traditional sources of credit. But given its more stable capital base, to the extent macro conditions sufficiently deteriorate, it could trigger a rise in defaults which would see credit conditions tighten. Measures of defaults remain below historically stressed readings, but they are elevated relative to recent history as borrowing costs have remained high and economic conditions continue to soften. Moreover, a measure of so-called “payment-in-kind” income, or deferred cash interest payments added to the principal balance instead, has also remained elevated. While not always problematic, it potentially points to more companies preferring to preserve liquidity given uncertain business conditions. Both indicators could act as early warning signs that some market strain may be building in certain pockets of the private credit market.

Deteriorating macro conditions may also lead to a decline in credit quality, particularly for riskier non-sponsored—or non-private-equity-backed—borrowers, where credit demand has remained steady despite the rise in uncertainty. While this presents ongoing opportunities for lenders, it also highlights the importance of deep underwriting and credit controls, together with a focus on less cyclical sectors—like business services, technology, and healthcare over cyclical ones like consumer discretionary and energy—to minimize exposure to downside economic risks and, ultimately, losses.

Implications for investors

Despite recent volatility, credit fundamentals remain solid. Corporate leverage is well below prior peaks, interest coverage ratios have improved, and realized credit losses remain low by historical standards. These conditions, combined with the U.S. economy’s resilience, suggest that defaults should stay manageable in the near term.

Against this backdrop, private credit’s role has become increasingly important. Since the Global Financial Crisis, the asset class has expanded to fill gaps left by banks and public markets, and its ample dry powder and structural features enable it to provide financing with consistency—whether traditional channels are expanding or retrenching. This countercyclical capacity adds a measure of stability to the broader credit ecosystem.

That said, private credit is not immune to broader macro shocks or the credit cycle. Concerns around leverage and potential spillovers into the banking system highlight the need for discipline. Investors who focus on strong underwriting standards, robust credit structures, and sectors with more stable cash flows will be best positioned to navigate uncertainty.

Ultimately, private credit’s differentiated characteristics—resilience in dislocated markets, structural advantages, and growing significance in the financial system—make it a vital component of today’s capital landscape. With careful risk management, the asset class can continue to provide both stability for borrowers and opportunity for investors through the cycle.

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Risk considerations
Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Past Performance does not guarantee future return. All financial investments involve an element of risk. Therefore, the value of the investment and the income from it will vary and the initial investment amount cannot be guaranteed. Investments in private debt, including leveraged loans, middle market loans, and mezzanine debt, are subject to various risk factors, including credit risk, liquidity risk and interest rate risk. Private credit involves an investment in non-publicly traded securities which are subject to illiquidity risk. Portfolios that invest in private credit may be leveraged and may engage in speculative investment practices that increase the risk of investment loss.

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