Chris Martin, Institutional Portfolio Manager, looks at how private debt is an increasingly established part of strategic asset allocations, but there is more to this than private credit. Key takeaways: Private debt is not a single strategy: it spans a plethora of sub-strategies from private credit to real asset debt, asset-backed finance, and beyond. Each has distinct risk and return characteristics, but many investors access only a subset of the wider opportunity set. Returns in private debt are built differently by strategy : understanding that decomposition changes how to size, position and stress-test each allocation. Strategy selection requires a framework, not a shortlist: we propose five diagnostic questions that offer investors a structured basis for assessing which private debt strategies could belong in their portfolio.