Nearly half of investors plan to boost EM private credit – Gemcorp survey

By Libby George

LONDON, June 16 (Reuters) – Some 42% of institutional investors plan to increase their private credit allocations to emerging markets over the next two years, according to a survey by emerging markets asset manager Gemcorp, which could provide a significant inflow of much-needed investment to developing countries.     

The global private credit market is roughly $3.5 trillion, according to the Alternative Investment Management Association, but only a small portion of this currently flows to emerging markets. 

• Fewer than 6% of respondents’ private credit portfolios on average were allocated to emerging markets in Gemcorp’s survey of 250 investment decision-makers, and 40% of respondents had no current EM allocation at all.

• The Gemcorp survey, which polled investors across 22 countries, found that risk perception remains a huge barrier, with more than 70% of respondents expecting higher risk in emerging-market private credit relative to developed markets.

• “It is a view we have encountered regularly in conversations with investors for over a decade, but one we believe is misunderstood and changes significantly when investors become more familiar with the asset class,” Felipe Berliner, Gemcorp’s co-founder and head of structuring said in the report. “What this study also reveals is that only a minority of investors believe they have a full understanding of the structural protections available in emerging market private credit.”

• High-profile defaults in developed world private credit have raised concerns over its sustainability; over 90% of those polled by Gemcorp viewed rising defaults as a challenge, and just over half rated rising default rates in the developed world as a “significant” challenge.

• This had already driven an increase in EM private credit, and last year, investors ploughed a record $22.3 billion of private credit into emerging markets, according to the data from the Global Private Capital Association.

• Gemcorp found that deployment of private credit cash to emerging markets varied significantly by investor region, with more than 90% of Middle Eastern investors already allocating to EM private credit, compared with 42% among North American respondents.

• Some 57% of Middle East-based respondents also rated Africa as an attractive destination, well above the average of 28%.

• The survey covered private and public pension funds, insurers, endowments and foundations and family offices.

(Reporting by Libby George; Editing by Amanda Cooper)