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There's more happening beneath the surface than the market narrative would suggest. It seems a lot of private equity portfolios are carrying businesses longer than they used to, so there's a growing pool of assets that will eventually need an exit. At the same time, buyers haven't lowered the bar, so there's still a lot of selectivity around quality and valuation.
Coverage is what lets buyers find the right deals early. Our PEI data shows median U.S. platform holding periods moved from roughly 4.7 to 5.0 years between 2015 and 2022, then to 5.9 years in 2025, which gives you a sense of how much inventory has built up.
What Intermediary Coverage Means
At a high level, we help buyers cover a part of the intermediary market that's difficult to cover internally at scale. Most PE firms already know the major investment banks in their sectors. The harder part is staying consistently connected to the thousands of smaller banks, boutiques, brokers, and other M&A advisors that might only have an occasional deal that fits a mandate.
We maintain a network of more than 12,000 intermediary contacts, so instead of a buyer managing that entire universe themselves, we extend their coverage. On the client side, that means a recurring stream of deals already compared against their investment criteria, access to the underlying deal information through our portal, and access to Private Equity Info. We can also take a buyer's acquisition criteria directly out to our intermediary network rather than waiting for the right opportunity to appear organically.
The value is really bandwidth. We're sourcing about 50 to 80 deals a month. This means a client gets broader, more consistent market coverage without having to replicate that infrastructure internally.
How Deals Get Screened
The first thing we do is spend time understanding what the buyer actually wants to acquire. Industry is part of it, but the useful criteria go much deeper: company size, geography, end markets, business model, transaction type, and whether they're looking for a platform or an add-on.
As opportunities come through our intermediary relationships, we compare them against those criteria before anything is surfaced for the client. The goal is to narrow the funnel so what reaches a client is genuinely relevant to their mandate and has a realistic path toward an offer and, eventually, a closed transaction.
The more specific we can get, the more useful this becomes. The criteria aren't static either. If a client starts seeing deals and tells us a specific subsection is more interesting, we keep refining the search in real time.
Proof in Practice
We've been working in lower middle market deal sourcing for more than a decade, and multiple transactions have originated through our relationships. Most recently, our Intermediary Coverage team connected TiniFiber, a Columbia River Partners portfolio company, with CoreLinc.
The goal is to filter out less relevant opportunities upfront, allowing clients to focus their time and resources on the deals that are the strongest fit and most worth pursuing.
Coverage, Not Just Access
The way I think about it, we're providing a sourcing function rather than simply a place where buyers can browse deals. There are platforms where a buyer logs in, reviews opportunities, and decides what to pursue. We work differently: maintaining intermediary relationships, screening opportunities against each client's mandate, and, depending on the subscription, proactively putting a buyer's criteria in front of our network rather than waiting for the right opportunity to appear. A lot of lower middle market deal flow is relationship-driven, and consistent coverage is hard to replicate at scale.
I'd also separate access from exclusivity. What we're doing is increasing the probability that a client sees opportunities they otherwise might never have known about. It's a broader field of vision on active deals in the market.
Subscription Structure
We offer multiple tiers of Intermediary Coverage, with the highest level including a more proactive approach to getting a client's criteria in front of the intermediary network. That can include more targeted outreach around a buyer's specific investment mandate and additional awareness building among intermediaries that may have relevant opportunities now or in the future.
See the full breakdown on our Intermediary Coverage page.
What the Market Hasn't Priced In Yet
The market tends to overvalue visibility and undervalue coverage. The most active banks are easy for everyone to know, but a lot of incremental deal flow sits with smaller intermediaries that are much harder to stay in front of consistently. That's where we can create an advantage, by giving clients broader coverage across that fragmented part of the market so fewer relevant opportunities slip through the cracks.
Holding periods are stretching and selectivity isn't easing. The firms finding the right deals early are the ones with coverage beyond the banks everyone already knows.
About TruSight
TruSight is a premier M&A deal sourcing firm that connects private equity funds, family offices, and strategic acquirers with high-quality, proprietary investment opportunities through Intermediary Coverage and Retained Buy-Side Search. With a disciplined, research-driven approach, TruSight helps clients identify and act on off-market deals that others never see.
Connect with our team to see what coverage looks like for your mandate.
