Credit Secondary Investments

What is a credit secondary investment?

A credit secondary investment occurs when a buyer purchases existing private credit assets, such as fund interests backed by senior secured loans, from another investor. Credit secondaries provide investors with access to seasoned private credit portfolios through secondary credit investments. These typically involve acquiring interests in funds across the private credit spectrum, either via LP-led and GP-led transactions. By entering funds mid-life, investors gain enhanced visibility into underlying assets, reduce blind pool risk, and seek to benefit from accelerated cash flows.

Why credit secondaries?

The private credit secondaries market is growing rapidly but remains significantly undercapitalized. We believe this presents a compelling opportunity to access discounted entry points, diversify across thousands of loans, and achieve attractive risk-adjusted returns relative to primary fund commitments.

$1.2B+

Committed

Years of experience

Our approach to credit secondary investments

HarbourVest’s credit secondaries strategy is designed to deliver consistent income and long-term value through a diversified portfolio of senior credit secondaries. Leveraging our over 40 years of leadership in secondary investments, we target both LP-led and GP-led secondary credit transactions by harnessing our scale, platform relationships, and proprietary data to identify and execute high-quality opportunities. With dedicated pools of capital for senior secured and opportunistic credit strategies, we offer solutions to fit investor’s risk-return and allocation needs.

Our disciplined underwriting process emphasizes transparency, downside protection, and diversification. We seek seasoned private credit portfolios with strong alignment between GPs and investors, and we actively manage exposure across vintage year, sector, and geography. With a dedicated team supported by HarbourVest’s broader secondaries and credit platforms, we aim to deliver differentiated access and execution at scale.

Credit secondaries present a highly compelling risk-reward opportunity that we believe HarbourVest is uniquely positioned to deliver to our investors. With strong market fundamentals, this segment is poised to be the fastest-growing area of private markets for years to come, evolving much like the private equity secondaries market — but on a significantly accelerated timeline.

Greg Ciesielski Managing Director

This is a highly undercapitalized and rapidly developing market. We believe HarbourVest is well-positioned to be a leader in the space given our decades of secondaries leadership and deep knowledge of the credit markets.

Sean Gillespie Principal

Investors: Why consider HarbourVest?

We believe our dual positioning — as a global leader in secondary investments and a multimanager investor in private credit — enables us to structure transactions that align interests and unlock value. HarbourVest offers a distinct edge in credit secondaries through its combination of global reach, deep relationships, and demonstrated execution capabilities.

Our credit secondaries team is supported by proprietary analytics, a robust sourcing network, and a disciplined investment process. With over 40 years of private markets experience and more than $1.2 billion committed to credit secondaries, we bring institutional scale and insight to a market that demands both. For investors seeking private markets liquidity solutions, transparency, and performance, HarbourVest is a trusted partner.

Meet the team

We're looking forward to hearing from you.

Our team is available to discuss your private markets goals and questions.