Pacific Investment Management Company (Pimco) has highlighted a growing sensitivity among private credit investors to valuation discrepancies, creating what it terms a "trust gap" between asset managers.

In a report published on the firm's website this week, Pimco strategist Lotfi Karoui noted that as net asset values are increasingly influenced by individual firms' own assumptions, managers with higher-quality loan portfolios are gaining greater market recognition.

He stated that the market is no longer applying a blanket discount to the entire sector but is instead making "more explicit distinctions between managers, asset quality, and trust in reported valuations."

Regulators are currently intensifying their scrutiny of valuation differences within the $1.8 trillion private credit market. Former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, has previously expressed concerns about how Wall Street firms assess the value of these assets, which typically do not trade frequently.

Concurrently, several major private credit firms, including Apollo Global Management, Ares Management, BlackRock, and Blackstone, continued to face significant redemption pressure in the second quarter.

Karoui pointed out that as investor trust in valuations erodes, this redemption pressure could intensify, potentially forcing funds to sell their higher-quality, more liquid assets. He suggested that persistent outflows could eventually lead valuations to reflect the price investors are actually willing to pay, whether through write-downs, discounted secondary market trades, or sales at a loss.

However, asset sales have remained relatively uncommon this year. Pimco President Christian Stracke noted in March that the "prices for loan assets on the market have not yet reached levels at which we are willing to buy."

If borrowers are unable to continue servicing their debt, unlisted Business Development Companies (BDCs) will need to adjust their valuations. This would create a more real-time pricing dynamic than what was seen several years ago when real estate vehicles were under stress.

Karoui wrote, "This implies that future market focus will increasingly shift towards the actual performance of the assets and, ultimately, portfolio quality."