New indexes measuring performance of US-registered, unlisted semiliquid funds are now available. New research from PitchBook provides insight into performance characteristics for the rapidly growing category.
Morningstar, Inc. today announced that its full suite of Morningstar PitchBook US Evergreen Fund Indexes is available. The new indexes offer investors comprehensive benchmarks designed to measure the performance of semiliquid, or “evergreen,” private market funds including tender offer funds, interval funds, unlisted BDCs, and unlisted REITs, with subindexes focused on private capital strategies.
As private markets expand and become more accessible to a broader universe of investors, evergreen fund structures, also referred to as “semiliquid” fund structures have emerged as a way for retail investors to more easily access areas like private credit, real estate, private equity, and venture capital which were previously available to only a select group of institutional or high net worth investors. According to Morningstar and PitchBook in its inaugural US Evergreen Fund Landscape Report, published in December, the evergreen fund universe stands at nearly $500 billion and is expected to pass $1 trillion by the end of the decade.
Evergreen funds have demonstrated resilient long‑term performance as the market has matured and investor adoption has increased. Since the inception of historical data in June 2014, the Morningstar PitchBook US Evergreen Fund Index has delivered approximately 7% annualized returns.
Returns across evergreen fund strategies vary widely, with a persistent gap between top- and bottom-performing funds even over shorter time periods. The Evergreen Fund Indexes provide a clear, peer-based yardstick for evaluating relative performance, risk, and persistence across the evolving market.
Sanjay Arya – Head of Innovation, Morningstar Indexes:
“Evergreen funds are transforming how investors access private markets, but until now, consistent performance benchmarks have been limited. The Morningstar PitchBook Evergreen Fund Indexes provide a standardized framework for evaluating semiliquid private market strategies, enabling allocators, advisors, and asset managers to compare outcomes with greater clarity and confidence.”
Zane Carmean – Director of Quantitative Research, PitchBook:
“With the potential for trillions of dollars to flow from the wealth channel into private markets, investors need benchmarks tailored to the unique asset mixes and liquidity structures of evergreen funds. These indexes fill that gap by providing a transparent, rules‑based foundation for peer comparison, performance evaluation, and deeper market insight as the evergreen universe continues to mature.”
The Morningstar PitchBook Evergreen Fund Indexes are available directly from Morningstar Indexes and can also be accessed through Morningstar Direct and PitchBook Direct Data.
Morningstar has introduced several new and enhanced investor tools to navigate the convergence of public and private markets in recent years, including expanded coverage of private companies and semiliquid funds from Morningstar Manager Research, standardized categories and metrics from Morningstar Direct, differentiated benchmarks from Morningstar Indexes, and unified workflow tools from PitchBook, like its best-in-class private markets reference data and analytics suite.
