Private Markets Revive Broker Commissions
Ben Haber, CEO of Monark, on building the DTCC for the private markets
Private markets matter to brokers because they turn investing back into a high take rate sales business. In public stocks, zero commission trading and payment for order flow compressed broker economics to tiny per share payments. In private funds and SPVs, the investor often pays an upfront sales load or management fee, and the selling broker can keep a meaningful slice, which makes alts one of the few product lines that can materially lift revenue per dollar sold.
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Monark is built to plug that richer fee stream straight into existing brokerage apps. Its partners can let users buy private offerings from the cash already sitting in their brokerage account, while Monark handles suitability, subscriptions, money movement, reporting, and often splits the remaining commission roughly 50 50 after admin costs.
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This is already how much of alternatives distribution works. In registered funds, brokers are commonly paid through front end sales loads. Monark describes evergreen funds from firms like Blackstone and KKR as typically carrying sales loads around 3.5%, and fee only RIA share classes as the exception because they cannot charge that commission.
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The strategic comparison is iCapital and CAIS. Those platforms also win by making alternatives easier to sell through advisors and broker networks, but the real engine is economics. iCapital highlights lowered minimums, e subscription workflows, and advisor enablement, because once alternatives fit normal wealth workflows, broker compensation becomes a growth driver again.
The next leg is broadening from niche pre IPO deals into everyday alternatives shelves inside mainstream brokerage and retirement accounts. As private funds become easier to custody, report, and buy alongside stocks and ETFs, the firms that control this commission rich distribution layer will capture more of the economics that public market trading gave away.