Alex ZonneveldA fund that promises quarterly liquidity is describing itself, and that promise tells you very little about whether it will work for you.
Liquidity isn’t really a property of a fund on its own. It’s the fit between how quickly each of your positions can be turned into cash and when you’re actually going to need that cash. Managing it well means writing down your own needs, whether they’re known, likely or merely possible, mapping every position by its worst-case exit terms, and making sure the two never collide. Family offices keep both sides on a single calendar, while most people only ever see the fund’s headline terms and discover the other side at the moment they need the money.
Two sides of the same calendar
Every portfolio has a supply side and a demand side. The supply side is what your positions allow: cash and listed assets can usually be sold within days, a monthly-dealing hedge fund might ask for 30 days’ notice, a semi-liquid credit fund deals quarterly with a gate that’s typically set at 5% of shares, and a private equity commitment can tie capital up for the best part of a decade.
The demand side is what your life asks of your capital. Some of those needs are known well in advance, like a tax bill in April or school fees in September. Some are likely, such as a property purchase next year or a capital call on a commitment you’ve already made, and some are only possible, like a health problem, a family emergency or an opportunity you’d want to move on quickly. Managing liquidity means putting both sides on the same calendar and checking that supply always covers demand, not just in normal conditions but in difficult ones too.
What 2026 showed about the supply side
Semi-liquid private credit funds were sold to wealthy individuals on the promise of regular exits, and for three quarters in a row this year far more holders wanted out than the terms allowed. At Blue Owl’s technology lending fund, holders asked to redeem 40.7% of their shares in the first quarter and 39% in the third, most of them people resubmitting requests that hadn’t been filled, while payouts stayed capped at 5% and Blue Owl pointed to “AI-related disruption to software companies” as one of the causes. Apollo Debt Solutions saw requests of 14.7% against the same 5% cap in the third quarter, and has said that people who asked for liquidity during 2026 will have received about 75% of what they requested after three quarters. Blackstone’s BCRED saw requests of around 10%, again against a 5% cap.
None of these funds broke their terms. Gates exist so that a fund holding private loans isn’t forced to sell them cheaply in a rush, which would hurt everyone who chooses to stay, and that’s a reasonable thing to protect.
What matters is what “quarterly” becomes under pressure. If 40% of holders want to leave and the cap is 5%, each of them receives roughly an eighth of what they asked for that quarter and has to ask again the next, so clearing the queue can take as long as eight quarters even if nobody new joins it. In other words, a fund that looks quarterly can behave like a two-year lock-up in precisely the conditions in which you’re most likely to need the money, because a fund that’s liquid when nobody needs it isn’t the same thing as a fund that’s liquid when you do.
The match, with real numbers
Imagine someone with $3 million spread across four positions.
| Holding | Amount | Terms | Worst case to cash |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stablecoins and a money market fund | $300k | Daily | A few days |
| Monthly market-neutral strategy | $900k | 30 days’ notice, no gate | About 2 months |
| Quarterly hedge strategy | $800k | 65 days’ notice, 25% per-holder gate | Up to a year |
| Semi-liquid private credit fund | $1m | Quarterly, 5% fund-level gate | Possibly 2 years or more |
On the headline terms this looks like a mostly liquid portfolio, but the picture changes as soon as you add the demand side, which in this case is a $400k tax bill due in April and a likely $1.2 million property purchase in the summer. Only $300k of the portfolio is reliably available within a month, so the April bill already depends on the market-neutral strategy dealing on time. The summer purchase then uses the rest of that strategy and still needs another $400k from either the hedge strategy or the credit fund, which are exactly the two positions most likely to stop behaving normally when markets are under stress. There’s nothing wrong with any individual holding here. The problem is simply that nobody ever put the two sides on the same page.
How a family office manages it
Family offices generally start by writing the demand side down, listing the family’s known, likely and possible needs with dates and amounts and revisiting that list whenever circumstances change. They then map the supply side by its worst case rather than its headline, recording each position’s dealing frequency, notice period, gate, lock-up and suspension rights, along with how long an exit would really take if everyone else wanted out at the same moment.
With both sides in front of them, they size positions to fit the match, so the amount that goes into a gated fund depends on what the family might need during the period that gate could last, rather than on how attractive the strategy looks. And they keep watching both sides over time, because a redemption queue that starts to grow is an early warning, and so is a change in the family’s own plans, and either can turn a good match into a poor one.
What AI changes
The expensive part of this has always been the supply side, because every fund has its own documents, often running to 80 pages or more, with the terms that matter scattered throughout. AI can now read those documents reliably, pulling out dealing frequencies, notice periods, gates (including whether they apply per holder or to the fund as a whole), lock-ups and suspension rights, and placing each position on the ladder automatically. It can follow public tender results so that you know when a queue is building, and it can set the whole ladder against your own calendar so that a mismatch shows up months before it starts to matter.
What it can’t do is make an illiquid asset liquid, and neither can tokenisation. A tokenised fund interest may be able to change hands at any hour of the day, but redemption still follows the fund’s terms and the liquidity of whatever the fund holds, and being able to transfer something isn’t the same as being able to redeem it.
Why this is about to matter to many more people
In March the US Department of Labor proposed a rule that would make it easier for 401(k) plans to offer private credit and private equity, with liquidity among the six factors that plan fiduciaries would be expected to weigh. At the same time, a new group of newly wealthy people, including employees of the AI companies preparing to go public, will hold most of their wealth in single stocks with staged lock-ups and will soon be offered semi-liquid funds as a way to diversify. Both groups would benefit from writing their demand side down before they sign anything.
How MakeBanc handles liquidity
Before you allocate, MakeBanc shows you a strategy’s liquidity terms in plain language rather than leaving them on page 84 of an offering document, and once you request a redemption you can see the date on which it will settle. That means you can see the supply side clearly and match it against your own needs before you commit. MakeBanc doesn’t decide how much of your capital should be liquid or which strategies fit your circumstances, but it does make sure the terms are in front of you when you make those decisions.
Frequently asked questions
How should liquidity be managed in a portfolio? By matching two things: how quickly each position can be turned into cash under its worst-case terms, and when you’ll need cash for your known, likely and possible needs. Family offices keep both on one calendar and size their illiquid positions so that they never collide with obligations.
What is a liquidity ladder? A liquidity ladder groups your holdings by how quickly each one could become cash under its worst-case terms, for example within a week, a month, a quarter or a year. It represents the supply side of liquidity management, which then needs to be compared with your own needs.
How long does it take to get money out of a gated fund? It depends on the size of the redemption queue relative to the cap. At a 5% quarterly cap with 40% of shares requested, clearing the queue can take between five and eight quarters, and longer if new requests keep arriving.
Does tokenisation fix fund liquidity? No. Tokenisation can make a fund interest easier to transfer, but redemption still follows the fund’s terms and depends on the liquidity of what the fund holds.
Sources
- Alternative Credit Investor, Blue Owl private credit redemption requests fall again in Q3, 30 October 2026
- Yahoo Finance / Reuters, Blue Owl shares fall as private debt manager caps major withdrawal requests
- WTVB / Reuters, Apollo private credit fund redemption requests ease in third quarter
- KSL / Reuters, Private credit roundup
- Citi GPS, Tokenization 2030, June 2026
- Morrison Foerster, DOL proposes rule on 401(k) alternative assets, April 2026
- Commons, Anthropic’s IPO filing, in plain English
MakeBanc is a technology platform that connects investors with independent asset managers. MakeBanc does not provide investment advice, custody services or banking services. Funds named here come from public reporting and are not strategies available through MakeBanc. The portfolio example is illustrative. Nothing here is an offer or invitation to allocate to any strategy.