StepStone Launches Free Private Markets Modeling Tool for Advisers
StepStone Group has launched StepStone Total Portfolio Allocator, a free, publicly available modeling tool that lets financial advisers and institutions compare a public-markets-only portfolio with one that adds private markets allocations, the firm announced Oct. 14.
The tool is aimed at private wealth firms and advisers, family offices, multi-family offices, small institutions, and defined contribution plan administrators. Users start with a public market risk profile, add private markets allocations across four asset classes – private equity, infrastructure, private debt, and real estate – and compare hypothetical returns, volatility, and risk-return metrics against an equivalent public-only portfolio. The tool also shows how modeled portfolios would have behaved through the Global Financial Crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2022 rate shock.
StepStone built both the technology and the underlying modeling engine in-house, the company said in responses to questions from AltsWire. Alongside public market indices and proxies for private assets, the tool draws on SPI by StepStone, the firm’s private markets data platform, and proprietary data StepStone sources through its limited partner relationships and general partner diligence. StepStone said SPI covers more than 20,000 general partners, 53,000 funds, and 304,000 underlying investments.
“The breadth of SPI by StepStone gives this tool a private markets foundation that is difficult to replicate,” said Tyler Johnson, partner and chief technology officer of StepStone Group.
That build differs from the one Brookfield used. In November 2025, Brookfield’s private wealth business and iCapital released Alts Allocator, an interactive tool that models how adding alternatives to a traditional 60/40 portfolio may affect diversification. Brookfield built the tool’s three investor profiles from its 2024 Alts Institute Alternative Investing Survey, while the modeling ran on iCapital Architect, the portfolio construction engine iCapital introduced in 2023.
“For decades, StepStone has helped sophisticated institutional investors build private markets portfolios around specific investment objectives,” said Brett Schlemovitz, partner and president of StepStone Private Wealth Solutions. “StepStone Total Portfolio Allocator puts that experience into the hands of a broader range of U.S. investors.”
How the Numbers Are Built
The tool’s private markets capital market assumptions are StepStone’s own, combining macroeconomic projections, SPI data, bottom-up return-driver models, and the views of the firm’s asset class teams, the company said. For public equities and bonds, StepStone uses an average of long-term capital market assumptions from several independent third-party providers rather than a house view. Portfolio-level expected return, volatility, and Sharpe ratio are calculated using modern portfolio theory.
Historical and stress-test figures are based on private market indices and reflect index-level performance, not the returns of any specific fund or investor portfolio, StepStone said. Returns are shown net of fees.
StepStone acknowledged several limits of that approach. Because the indices aggregate funds across vintages, they represent a diversified, fully invested exposure that is largely unaffected by the J-curve, the firm said. Actual investor outcomes may differ depending on the vehicle, including the J-curve and ramp-up period of closed-end funds or cash drag from liquidity holdings in evergreen structures. And return and volatility figures “are derived from appraisal-based private market indices, which may be subject to smoothing,” StepStone said. Smoothing can make private assets appear less volatile than they are.
No Platform or Plan Ties Yet
The tool is not yet integrated with wealth platforms, custodians, or 401(k) recordkeepers, though StepStone said it is “actively exploring opportunities in these areas.” No plan administrator or recordkeeper has been named as a user, and the tool is not tied to a StepStone retirement plan product, the firm said.
The inclusion of defined contribution plan administrators comes as asset managers push into retirement plans. Research from Cerulli Associates and Morningstar published earlier this month found that just 19.5% of surveyed advisers considered alternatives access through third-party platforms very helpful to their defined contribution practices, the lowest of 10 technology developments rated.
Total Portfolio Allocator is part of StepStone Academy, the firm’s education platform for financial professionals.
StepStone Private Wealth had $21.8 billion in platform assets under management as of June 30, 2026, the firm said. Its lineup includes the StepStone Private Equity Strategies Fund (STPEX), which had raised more than $750 million within about two months of its September 2025 debut and had $2 billion in AUM as of Sept. 30, 2026, according to StepStone. The lineup also includes the StepStone Private Credit Income Fund (CRDEX), an interval fund launched in June 2024.
StepStone Group said it was responsible for approximately $913 billion of total capital as of June 30, 2026, including $245 billion of assets under management.
Visit the AltsWire directory page.
