With the increasing adoption of evergreens in Long Term Investment Funds, benchmarking their performance and ensuring timely and accurate valuations should be a fiduciary concern. Both privateMetrics® and infraMetrics® indices are ESMA-registered, provide the only asset-level benchmarks in the industry and offer monthly returns that can be used to benchmark the performance of private equity and infrastructure equity Evergreens.

Benchmarking and Valuations

The proliferation of Evergreens in Long Term Investment Funds will demand different benchmarking and valuation practices. Both privateMetrics® and infraMetrics®, with monthly priced asset level indices, can be used to benchmark private equity and infrastructure Evergreen ELTIFs and LTAFs, or the equivalent sleeve within a fund. Both indices are already registered with ESMA, and can be used to assess risk-adjusted performance of the funds. Using listed indices as proxies can produce misleading results, as we have written about previously. Within the DC pension market in the UK, growth of LTAFs may eventually lead to mandatory benchmarking like that observed in Australia’s DC system with APRA’s Your Future, Your Super. Benchmarking should be a fiduciary consideration.

ELTIF 2.0

Revisions¹ to The European Long Term Investment Fund have led to renewed growth in a segment that had been slow to gain traction. The flexibility to supplement closed-end funds with open-end Evergreen funds that can pursue primaries, secondaries, and co-investments has led to a surge in new ELTIF offerings. Less onerous investment restrictions for the fund and lower minimums for retail investors may make ELTIF products more attractive. 2024 saw the highest number of new ELTIFs launched (55), with the majority of funds open-ended or Evergreen. With AUM of ~€21 billion across private equity, infrastructure, and private debt, this is still a small market but should expand rapidly in the coming years.

LTAFs

The UK’s version of the Long Term Asset Fund was established in 2021 with a focus on the defined contribution pension market. Revisions in 2023 were made to broaden access to retail and self-invested pension plans. The market size is smaller² at £5 billion, but should see increasing flows with the growth of the DC pension market. Furthermore, the push for more private assets in DC plans (FCA) and the Mansion House Accord are both supportive of growth. There were 34 LTAFs with the FCA registry as of November 2025, offered by asset managers and insurance and DC pension providers. Unlike ELTIFs, LTAFs were open-ended evergreen structures from the beginning, to accommodate the ongoing flows from the DC pension market. A full discussion of ELTIFs and LTAFs is available in the appendix of the report available below.

Evergreens

The non-ELTIF Evergreen fund AUM in Europe was approximately €63 billion at the end of 2024³, with private equity and infrastructure evergreens accounting for approximately €25 billion and €8 billion, respectively. Offering Evergreens as ELTIFs and LTAFs will expand the market opportunity to retail and the DC pension market, from the existing wealth and institutional channels. Many asset managers that offer Evergreens to the wealth market have launched ELTIFs and LTAFs, including Schroders (offering both) and EQT, which recently launched an ELTIF for its EQT Nexus Evergreen.

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Footnotes:

• • ¹https://www.alfi.lu/
  • ²LTAF assets hit £5bn four years after launch
  • ³Evergreen and Eltif fund markets soar to more than €83bn – Funds Europe