Private credit players are looking to catch the next wave of growth — in asset-based lending in Europe. Globally, asset-based financing has been the largest source of private credit industry growth: our new estimates are that assets under management at leading firms were up 38% in the five quarters ending in the third quarter of 2025, roughly twice as much as other categories of private credit.
Investors we meet are also increasingly intrigued by private credit in Europe: There was a 40% rise in private credit fundraising in the UK and continental Europe in 2025 according to Preqin, and our interviews speak to far greater appetite ahead.
Our new estimates suggest asset-based finance is a €4.2 trillion category in Europe today, rivaling the US. Yet non-banks hold just 13% of the total, less than half of the 34% share in the US. What’s more, Europe looks set for several trillion euros of spending on digital and energy infrastructure. Meeting that demand will require funding from every corner of the financial system: public markets, banks, governments, and private capital, and we see opportunities for private credit to gain share — as Huw van Steenis argued in the January 19 Financial Times op-ed “Europe’s AI ambitions are running into a markets plumbing problem.”
There has been a flurry of bank and private credit origination partnerships, particularly for infrastructure, reflecting the bank-led system and Europe’s many distinct, country-level markets.
Regulatory hurdles in securitization and Solvency II have limited the buildout of insurance buyers in the EU thus far, but changes in UK regulation and planned recalibration in the EU will ease some of these constraints — though more will be required to help the European credit pipes to flow more cleanly.
In our report, “Private Credit’s Next Act In Europe,” we explore how private credit 2.0 is playing out in Europe: the sub-sectors growing the fastest, the regulations that will shape it, and the emerging bank and non-bank partnerships. We explore what this might mean — for banks, investors, and infrastructure players.
Read the original piece here (paywall).
