Apollo will offer daily mark-to-market valuations on all of its credit assets, including direct lending, before Q4 2026, CEO Marc Rowan said on May 5.
The change is intended to allay concerns about private credit’s opacity and valuation practices, which have been in the spotlight for the past several months amid a spike in redemption activity among retail investors.
“The recent press around marks is just driving us to this solution. And I expect regulatory interest to follow, which will also drive toward the solution,” said Rowan on a Wednesday morning earnings call.
By June 30, Apollo will offer daily pricing for all of its investment-grade corporate fixed income assets. By Sept. 30, it will offer such pricing for all of its credit assets, including direct lending and asset-backed finance.
Rowan suggested the daily marks would follow a conservative methodology, taking into account others’ marks, secondary trades, and comparable issuers.
Speaking about daily valuation practices at Apollo Debt Solutions, Rowan said that if ADS shares a position with any other lenders, “we take the lowest mark always, whether we agree with that mark or not, because that is indicative of where someone might sell the position, and therefore we market to the lowest price.”
Apollo has been one of the leading advocates of introducing private credit assets to retirement portfolios. The asset manager has championed and launched several first-of-their-kind vehicles to appeal to retail investors, including a private credit ETF and blockchain-native feeder fund.
Additionally, Apollo promised that every private asset in its portfolio will have a unique ID with Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (ICE), a fintech platform and exchange. In March, Apollo and ICE announced a partnership to build an inter-lender data-sharing platform.
“This is the beginning of standardization across this marketplace. It also gives us a tremendous amount of information on real-time pricing and helps inform our estimated daily values across our credit portfolio,” said Rowan.
Featured image by Philippe LEJEANVRE/Getty Images
Learn about our editorial standards.
