The private credit boom created a lucrative job on Wall Street: selling the asset class to wealthy individuals hungry for returns.
Now, as redemption requests climb and concerns about credit quality spread, the sales, fundraising, and business development professionals who helped fuel that growth are facing a new reality. They’re focused less on bringing new money in and more about keeping it from flowing out.
The job of serving as the connective tissue between private capital firms and the financial advisors who sell their products is now among the most stressful in finance. Used to playing offense, they’re now on the defensive. This shift could change how they work and how they’re paid, and how firms are thinking about new hires.
After years of rapid growth, concerns over credit quality and heightened exposure to challenged software assets have driven record-high investor redemption requests at some of the biggest funds, including Blackstone, Blue Owl, Ares, and Apollo. And while there are still inflows into these funds, they’re not enough to replace outflows.
“They’ve been put into a position where they’re forced to play defense, and that’s not necessarily a position where a lot of our candidates want to be,” Jessica Xu, head of investor relations recruitment at recruiter Selby Jennings, told Business Insider.
These workers need to work “considerably harder” in current market conditions, said Xu, with only a hope of “defending” their firm’s assets under management. Not only is it a lot of work, but it can also mean substantially reduced pay, as many of these workers receive a large portion of their pay based on their own and the firm’s fundraising record.
Anxious clients
Investors have so many questions that they’re now reaching out to their old salespeople for advice, according to one former wholesaler at a major private credit firm who now works in private wealth.
“I have fielded a few handfuls of calls in the last week from old advisors I used to sell to, asking me what I think,” the former wholesaler said in early April.
This comes after a sustained hiring boom at the intersection of private wealth and credit. These roles reached an all-time high of 585 moves in 2025, according to data from recruiting firm Jensen Partners. Most notably, the hiring didn’t experience a typical fourth-quarter drop-off (unlike all other roles Jensen tracked), even as concern about private credit began to mount in the fall.
One of the main candidate profiles for these roles is those that have worked in distribution at traditional asset managers.
Unlike working at a traditional asset manager, with a wide range of potential strategies to sell, wholesalers at these private market firms have, at best, a few options to sell to wealth advisors and their investors.
“You’re stuck saying, ‘Buy more please,'” the former wholesaler said. “There really is no place to defend.”
The ex-wholesaler said he has had former colleagues leave private credit due to redemption limits. Commission on sales is based on gross, not net sales, meaning there’s no incentive to focus on keeping clients in funds.
“It’s been a busy couple of weeks for people managing private credit LP relationships,” said Lisa Steele, a partner at recruiting firm Braddock Matthews Barrett who focuses on roles fundraising from limited partners, whether large institutions or retail investors.
While Steele said she’s not seeing many examples of people saying, “I need to get out of here,” others have.
“Normally, if you worked at one of these top alternative investment firms that’s in the headlines, you’d make a move to a similar company,” said Xu, explaining that they’re now more willing to look at smaller firms that aren’t traditional lateral moves.
More selective hiring
The redemption squeeze has led some industry executives to question whether private wealth channels have had the same understanding of the market as institutional investors.
“What’s happened is as the asset class has grown, as an industry we could have done a better job of making individual investors truly understand there will be times where redemptions are low and you can move in and out all of your capital,” Doug Ostrover, co-CEO of Blue Owl, said last month. “But there will be times like today where you’re only going to get a fraction out.”
In a message shared with Business Insider, Ostrover added additional context, saying that investors receive clear disclosure of the 5% liquidity feature before investing. He added the industry will “continue to educate the broader marketplace as to the features of these funds.”
Ensuring that retail investors and their advisors have the right intel is likely to drive continued demand for roles such as product specialists who answer clients’ questions and concerns and put them in an economic context.
“You need to be someone who can engage proactively and commercially with a firm’s CIO, as well as work with financial advisors who might be newer to the strategy,” said Steele.
These employees can speak like an investor, and have even attracted applicants from traditional investment roles, said Adam Loughran, senior vice president at Selby Jennings.
“I’m finding more and more funds having an interest in hiring someone with an investing underwriting background into those product specialist seats because they can speak about their investment strategies to their investors in a very technical and articulate manner,” Loughran said.
Another thing on the wish list? Staffers who lived through prior economic meltdowns, so they can use their own experience to reassure clients.
“I get worried about people who haven’t lived through the GFC calling me,” said Mike Serio, CIO at Trilogy Financial, a wealth management team with over $4 billion in AUM.
“I have heard this from a number of people: I want old souls managing my private credit,” Serio said.
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