Credit secondaries has reached an inflection point. Transaction volume roughly doubled to c.$20bn in 2025, GP-led deals now represent the majority of activity, and c.$37bn of dry powder is piling pressure on managers to scale their investment teams and fast.
The problem is that the talent market hasn't kept pace. Credit secondaries demands a hybrid skillset across credit underwriting, secondaries execution, portfolio valuation and LP relationship management. Few professionals have developed all of these capabilities in a single seat, and with just over 160 dedicated credit secondaries investors identified globally, the pool is exceptionally shallow relative to the capital now targeting the strategy.
What makes this challenge particularly complex is that it is happening simultaneously across managers. Firms are reactivating flagship vehicles, accelerating deployment and expanding teams all at once, converging on the same limited pool of experienced professionals. The resulting supply-demand imbalance is already creating a bottleneck, and it is only set to deepen.
The firms best placed to navigate this will be those that act ahead of peak demand, hiring from adjacent disciplines, assessing transferable capabilities, and investing in upskilling rather than waiting for a seasoned credit secondaries talent pool that may never be large enough to meet the market's needs.
In this report, Carpenter Farraday, in collaboration with Norgay Partners, maps the seven most relevant adjacent talent pools, from direct lending and leveraged finance to distressed debt and fund finance, examining what each background brings to the table and where the capability gaps persist. We also set out what firms need to do now to get ahead of an intensifying talent bottleneck.
Download the full report below: