Monark as DTCC for Private Markets
Ben Haber, CEO of Monark, on building the DTCC for the private markets
This points to Monark trying to become the default plumbing layer for private investing, not just another place to buy deals. In practice that means owning the messy work that makes private assets feel more like public securities inside existing brokerage apps, including investor eligibility, money movement, reconciliation, custody workflows, reporting, and eventually secondary trading. That position gets stronger as more brokerages and RIAs want private markets without building the stack themselves.
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DTCC matters because it sits underneath public markets as shared post trade infrastructure. Monark is aiming for a similar role in private markets by plugging into brokerages, clearing firms, and wealth platforms so investors can buy private assets from the same account they already use for stocks and cash.
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The product is concrete. A brokerage integrates Monark’s API, keeps its own front end, lets users fund private investments from existing account balances, and relies on Monark for suitability checks, trade processing, back office connectivity, reporting, and in some cases custody through clearing firm partners.
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The business model also looks like market infrastructure. Monark usually takes a share of the upfront fee on private offerings, often splitting economics with the distributing brokerage, and it is expanding from single name pre IPO SPVs into evergreen funds and an ATS for trading SPV interests inside its own ecosystem.
If this model works, private markets will become a native feature inside mainstream brokerage and advisory products rather than a separate destination. The winners will be the companies that standardize custody, settlement, and distribution across many channels, because once private assets move through common rails, more products, more volume, and lower friction all follow.