The Data Tapes

Setpoint's Bite-Sized Debt Newsletter: April Edition I

April 08, 2026

🚀 What’s New at Setpoint

  • 🆕 What we built in Q1: Collateral risk comes from data you can't verify. The firms with an edge in asset-backed finance don't compromise on data integrity. Learn what we built in Q1 to support them.

  • 🌆 Upcoming Setpoint Events:

    • Private Credit's Next Act — May 12: Join Setpoint and Blue Owl for a private panel discussion and happy hour at a16z’s San Francisco office. We’re convening a curated group of investors, capital providers and originators for a candid conversation on where private credit goes from here — you don’t want to miss it. Apply to attend.

The Latest in ABS and Debt Markets

Welcome to The Data Tapes—your biweekly snapshot of private credit and ABS markets. In each edition, we bring you concise updates on debt financings, platform fundraises, data insights, market trends, and the latest from Setpoint.

💸 Debt Financings & Acquisitions

💰️Platform Growth

📈 Visuals

🗣️ Market Commentary

  • “I do believe that when we have a credit cycle, which will happen one day, losses on all leveraged lending in general will be higher than expected, relative to the environment. This is because credit standards have been modestly weakening pretty much across the board; i.e., more aggressive and positive assumptions about future performance (called add-backs), weaker covenants, more use of PIK (payment-in-kind; not paying interest in cash but accruing it), more aggressive private ratings (particularly in insurance companies) and more arbitrage (not always a great sign). Also, by and large, private credit does not tend to have great transparency or rigorous valuation “marks” of their loans — this increases the chance that people will sell if they think the environment will get worse — even if actual realized losses barely change. Additionally, actual losses right now are already a little higher than they should be, relative to the environment. Finally, if rates or credit spreads ever go up, the companies that borrowed will have to borrow at even higher rates, putting them under even greater stress. However this plays out, it should be expected that at some point insurance regulators will insist on more rigorous ratings or markdowns, which will likely lead to demands for more capital. It has always been true that not everyone providing credit is necessarily good at it. There are many players who are late to this game, and it should be expected that some credit providers will do a far worse job than others.” - Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chairman & CEO on Prognosis for Leveraged Lending and Private Credit, including Projected Losses and Drivers

  • “I think and hope that this is going to be a recalibration, people are going to readopt a more prudent underwriting. I think people in the industry will change behaviors. And by the way in some cases the market will change your behaviors because you may not be able to raise more capital. So the market mechanism will work. And hopefully, the best thing about the current moment is that this happened not in a deep recession. It happened when the economy is pretty, relatively helpful. I mean there’s definitely risk out there to be worried about, but this would be much different. If you think about redemptions on a lot of these wealth vehicles if it were a distressed environment, the redemptions would be 2-3x what they are. So to me, this is a gift to the industry to recalibrate.” - Alan Waxman, CEO of Sixth Street on Catalysts for Recalibration in the Private Credit

  • “When origination is outsourced to sponsors, paper flows to you. But you are not setting terms, you are competing for allocation. That is not origination. That is access. And access is not a durable edge. There are bad loans out there. Loose underwriting at peak multiples will produce losses. But loan performance is not the primary issue. This is not just a bad loan cycle. It is a structural mismatch between how capital was raised, what it was promised, and what the underlying assets can actually deliver.” - Billy Libby, Co-Founder & CEO of Upper90 on Structural Challenges of Product, Positioning, and Origination in the Private Credit Market

📖 What We’re Reading & Listening To

Investor Letters & Outlooks

Reading

  • A Guide to the Private Credit Crisis (The Economist)

  • Leading With Investment-Grade Private Credit (Apollo)

  • Private Credit Has an Origination Problem (Upper90 Capital)

  • The Balance Sheet Behind the AI Revolution (Apollo)

Podcasts & Interviews

  • Alan Waxman - Private Credit and the Modern Financial System (Invest Like the Best)

  • Apollo’s Jim Zelter Discusses Credit Markets, AI Infrastructure and Economic Resilience (Bloomberg)

  • Churchill's Kencel on the State of Private Credit (Bloomberg)

  • Kieran Goodwin - Private Credit Concerns (Capital Allocators)

  • Stonepeak Credit’s Ryan Roberge - building an infrastructure credit strategy (Alt Goes Mainstream)

  • The Business Builder: New Mountain Capital’s Steve Klinsky (GS)

  • The Private Credit Unwind is Coming - Tony Yoseloff (Master Investor Podcast)