52% of workplace plan participants would invest in private assets if offered

52% of workplace plan participants would invest in private assets if offered the option, up from 45% in 2025 and 36% in 2024, according to a survey of participants. Another 42% said they expect private assets to appear in their plans within five years.

Both figures describe what participants say they expect or would do, not money already committed to private markets inside their plans. The 52% is the share who would take the option if it were offered, not the share whose plan holds such an allocation today.

A QDIA holding reaches every participant who never makes an election, which is where a process-based safe harbor will be tested. For a plan adviser, a process standard would move the work from picking a vehicle to recording one: why the target-date series or managed account holds private assets, at what weight, and with what liquidity terms.

The Labor Department has sent its final rule on alternative investments in 401(k) plans to the White House for review. The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs classified the process-based, asset-neutral safe harbor as economically significant.

Asset-neutral is the part that matters for how sponsors get asked about this. As described, the standard is built around how a sponsor selects and monitors an allocation rather than around which asset class it chooses, so a plan that adds a private-markets sleeve and a plan that does not are answering the same question about process.

A Partners Group director said private assets belong inside the QDIA, with target-date funds and managed accounts as the practical vehicles. The argument follows the arithmetic: an allocation inside the default reaches participants who never make a selection, while a line item on the menu reaches only those who choose it.

That leaves two vehicles for the same job, and the choice carries different liquidity and pricing questions for the committee that signs off. The rule is at OIRA, and the case for which vehicle holds the allocation is being made ahead of it.