Deloitte's 24th "Fair Valuation and Pricing Survey" indicates that the growth of the private equity market, daily pricing, regulatory scrutiny, and artificial intelligence are reshaping the valuation operations model.
According to Deloitte's 24th edition of "The Private Equity Market: New Requirements for Valuation Expertise, Governance, Technology, Key Valuation Indicators, and Supervision," the private equity market investment continues to expand, posing new demands for valuation expertise, governance, technology, key valuation indicators, and supervision.
This report explores emerging, mature, and industry trends, pointing out that with the growth of the private equity market, the increasing regulatory attention, and rapid technological changes, fund groups are adjusting their governance and valuation operations models.
Paul Kraft, the leader of Deloitte's Investment Management Market Excellence and a partner at Deloitte and Touche Tohmatsu, stated: "As fund groups respond to investor demands, products evolve, and regulatory attention increases, private market investments are entering a more complex phase. The survey emphasizes the importance of combining innovation—including daily pricing and artificial intelligence—with strict governance, independent scrutiny, and human-led supervision."
Main findings include:
- Private market exposure continues to grow: The proportion of private equity investments has risen to 51%, while private credit accounts for 33%. Among fund groups that currently hold private equity positions, 46% indicate an increase in the number of private equity positions over the past 12 months, a significant rise from 26% in 2025; 66% have increased their private credit positions over the past year.
- Private credit valuation is becoming more frequent: Among the fund groups surveyed, 69% obtain the current price or price range for private credit from third-party providers, which is higher than the 66% in 2025. At the same time, 48% update the fair value daily based on observable market inputs, but only 4% perform a complete valuation update daily, re-examining unobservable inputs, cash flow assumptions, and methodologies. The largest proportion of fund groups (39%) conduct such complete, judgmental updates on a quarterly basis.
- AI is now entering the valuation process: 77% of participants indicated that they have started using or increased their use of artificial intelligence over the past year. Its applications include supporting research and document organization, preparing valuation memos, enhancing quality reviews, and assisting with reporting. Among AI users, 40% use it for fair valuation, in addition to financial reporting/investor communication (33%) and fund accounting operations (31%).
- Valuation regulatory scrutiny is intensifying: Among respondents who underwent SEC inspections in the past year, 53% identified valuation policies and procedures as a key area of focus, which is lower than the 58% in 2025 but higher than the 39% in 2024 and 40% in 2023. Nearly one-third of the respondents also stated that their internal valuation methods and/or the frequency of valuations for private equity, private lending, and restructuring equity were subject to significant inquiry.
Deloitte's fair valuation investigation clearly indicates that complexity will persist in the long term. The increasing number of funds that are difficult to value in the private equity market, including the launch of alternative funds and the implementation of AI use cases, along with regulatory attention to these two mature trends, mean that fund groups need to plan ahead to manage this complexity and potential risks.
Regarding the investigation of FV
Deloitte conducted a fair valuation and pricing survey in the summer of 2026, with participants representing 95 registered investment company fund groups of varying sizes. The survey participants included small, medium, and large fund groups. Among them, 38% of the fund groups had more than 100 funds under their management, while 20% had fewer than 15 funds. The asset management sizes reported by the participants ( AUM ) were as follows: over $500 billion (20%); $101 billion to $500 billion (29%); $51 billion to $100 billion (14%); $10 billion to $50 billion (23%); less than $10 billion (14%). Approximately 10% mainly managed stocks, 3% mainly managed fixed-income securities, and the remaining 87% managed balanced strategy portfolios. Unless otherwise stated, the percentages listed in this text are generally based on the number of respondents who answered specific questions.
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