iCapital Receives Undisclosed DTCC Strategic Investment for Workflow Push

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and financial technology company iCapital on September 28, 2026, announced a strategic collaboration to advance the infrastructure supporting private markets, with DTCC making a strategic investment in iCapital in support of the initiative. The announcement, datelined New York, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Sydney, did not disclose the amount or terms of the investment.

By bringing together DTCC’s market infrastructure, processing capabilities, and network with iCapital’s technology platform and investment workflows, the firms aim to connect data, operations, and market participants across the private investment lifecycle. The companies said the collaboration is intended to reduce operational friction and help wealth advisors and asset managers participate in private markets more efficiently, at greater scale, and with less risk. They described their complementary capabilities as aiming to deliver enhanced technology, operational efficiency, and industry standardization.

“Private markets represent one of the most significant growth areas in financial services today, creating an urgent need for modern, scalable infrastructure. Our strategic partnership with iCapital reflects DTCC’s commitment to supporting the continued evolution of diverse financial markets,” said Frank La Salla, President, Chief Executive Officer and Director of DTCC. “Broader adoption of alternative investments will depend on making the ecosystem easier to navigate, more efficient to operate, and highly resilient.”

As investor portfolios increasingly include both public and private investments, the firms said they aim to advance scalable industry solutions that streamline operations, enhance data quality, and create a more seamless experience for firms and investors. The collaboration is designed to support more connected and automated workflows across the private investment lifecycle. For wealth advisors, the companies said it can simplify how alternative investments are accessed and managed within client portfolios. For asset managers, they said it can provide more efficient and standardized infrastructure for reaching and supporting the wealth market.

DTCC’s Published Case for Shared Infrastructure

The collaboration follows arguments DTCC has published in favor of standardizing private-market operations along the lines of public-market infrastructure. In a DTCC article published on February 11, 2026, Talia Klein, Managing Director and Head of Wealth & Investment Solutions at DTCC, wrote that private markets reached $24.4 trillion in assets by the end of 2023, yet the absence of standardization is costing the industry billions in lost efficiency and blocking millions of investors from participating in the asset class.

Klein described shared private-market infrastructure as common data standards for fund information, standardized protocols for capital calls or distributions, and shared utilities for managing subscriptions and transfers. She wrote that shared infrastructure creates trust when clear rules, transparent governance, and robust operational standards give participants confidence in the marketplace, which she characterized as especially important as private markets open to broader investor bases. She also wrote that shared infrastructure mutualizes costs, with the industry pooling resources for functions that do not differentiate one firm from another instead of every firm building redundant systems.

Klein drew a parallel with the late 1960s, when surging trading volumes in public markets overwhelmed the paper-based system, certificates were lost, and trades failed to settle. The response, she wrote, was not for each brokerage firm to build better individual systems but to create shared infrastructure in the form of The Depository Trust Company in the United States, after which securities could move electronically and settlement became reliable. That infrastructure did not stifle innovation in public markets but enabled it, she argued, writing that private markets need the same shift because the opportunity cost of operating without shared infrastructure is growing.

She also addressed tokenization, the representation of fund interests on blockchain networks, describing its emergence as a natural inflection point for the industry to coalesce around standards. Tokenization alone will not fix the problem and could produce even more fragmented systems and isolated pools of liquidity without standardization, she wrote, adding that the benefit comes from combining tokenization with shared infrastructure and standardizing the data and processes around those assets.

Building shared infrastructure for private markets requires overcoming entrenched interests, coordinating across competitors, and making long-term investments that primarily benefit the ecosystem rather than individual firms, Klein wrote. She listed four elements she said it will take: getting fund managers, investors, distributors, service providers, and regulators to the table to design solutions; starting with areas where standardization provides the greatest benefit with the least resistance; building flexible components that participants can use rather than monolithic systems requiring wholesale adoption; and ensuring governance models that give all stakeholders an appropriate voice and protect against abuse of market position.