When BlackRock closed its $12 billion acquisition of HPS Investment Partners in July 2025, the deal looked like a straightforward bet on private credit's continued ascent. It combined HPS's origination platform with BlackRock's distribution reach to create a private credit franchise with roughly $220 billion in assets spanning direct lending, asset-based finance, and subordinated and mezzanine credit.
Now, with spreads widening and retail investors pulling back from private credit vehicles, BlackRock executives see a second, potentially more durable profit opportunity embedded in the same market dislocation: selling insurers and other institutional clients the risk modeling infrastructure to track their private credit exposure, whether markets recover or fall further.
