John Cole Scott, President of CEF Advisors, attended the Private Credit Summit hosted this week in New York City by Dechert LLP, and came away with a sense that private-credit markets have not yet gotten to the overheated levels that could turn investor fears of a blow-up into a financial reality. Scott, also the chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance, discusses “stress tests” that Fitch Ratings did on some large perpetual business development companies to see how they would perform if market conditions changed dramatically, and found that the BDCs did not break under severe conditions. He also discusses how insurance companies putting money into the private credit and BDC industries is changing underwriting standards, adding a measure of safety that he says all private credit investors are likely to benefit from. Plus, he discusses his sense of where the market is in its current cycle, based on what he heard from institutional investors who were in attendance.

