WealthTech’s role in cracking private markets and illiquidity challenges for HENRYs

By Ziad Mabsout, CEO & Co-Founder of Vennre

A new class of investors have come to the fore and received a lot of media attention over the last year, and they’re called HENRYs (High Earners, Not Rich Yet). They’re professionals in their thirties and forties with six-figure incomes and sound financial understanding. They save, invest and plan responsibly, yet find themselves locked out of the opportunities that build long-term wealth, such as private equity. Their frustration, captured by The Times and Business Insider, exposed a deeper structural flaw. The modern wealth industry still revolves around a model built for institutions, not individuals. And at the heart of that model lies the problem few have solved: illiquidity. Private markets have always promised higher potential returns in exchange for locking capital away. For institutions with decade-long horizons, that trade-off made sense. For individuals managing mortgages, childcare and entrepreneurial ambitions, it no longer does. Even as FinTech platforms have widened access to private investments, the experience remains stubbornly locked in an archaic process: wire your money, wait years, and hope the eventual exit justifies the wait.

At Money 20/20 this year, I argued that solving the illiquidity puzzle is the next great test for wealth management. Liquidity and accountability were once niche institutional concerns, but are now becoming consumer expectations. The question is, can technology finally deliver both? We’re already seeing the change. There’s a new wave of WealthTechs building the rails that can make private investing as flexible as public markets. Secondary markets now allow investors to trade stakes in private funds or pre-IPO companies that used to be impossible to move. Semi-liquid options, such as interval or evergreen funds, are giving investors defined redemption windows. It’s not perfect liquidity, but it’s a starting point. And at the forefront of change is blockchain-enabled tokenisation, turning once-illiquid holdings into tradeable digital units. Boston Consulting Group estimates that tokenised illiquid assets could reach $16 trillion by 2030, about a tenth of global GDP.

This is WealthTech 3.0. It’s less about the access and more about the mobility of capital. This includes fractionalisation engines and secondary trading API’s to transparent digital registries. Technology is finally tackling the plumbing of private markets, the part that decides who can move, when, and at what price.

Regulators are beginning to move in parallel. The FCA’s Long-Term Asset Fund framework has created a regulated route for semi-liquid exposure to private markets.

In Saudi Arabia, the Real Estate General Authority (REGA) recently completed the kingdom’s first tokenised title deed under regulated supervision, marking a major step in creating official standards for property tokenisation. It’s clear to see that there has been a shift; innovation and investor protection are being aligned rather than pitted against each other. Transparency is improving, too. The ILPA has introduced standardised fee and performance-reporting templates, with survey respondents indicating intention to adopt by around half of the GP community. At the same time, developments in AI-driven analytics and blockchain-based audit trails are laying the groundwork for what may become continuous verification of private-fund performance, aligning accountability in private markets with what retail investors expect in public markets.

The HENRY generation is accelerating this momentum. They are digital first and data-literate. They want direct exposure, performance-linked fees and the ability to rebalance when life changes. WealthTech is not putting these expectations into infrastructure, essentially transforming institutional systems into intuitive tools that let individuals engage with private markets on their own terms. The challenge now is that the industry needs to make that flexibility durable. The next phase of WealthTech must deliver transparent liquid access, clear reporting and incentives that genuinely mirror investor outcomes. In 2024, liquidity became a buzzword; in 2025, the infrastructure matured. I’m predicting that in 2026, the model will be proven. Solving liquidity through tokenisation would unlock the exponential growth & allocation of HENRYs to private markets.