Yield Is a Feature. Trust Is the Product.

What LP Conversations in Private Credit Taught Me

By Eljona Shkreli

When I first started telling people that Stratus Financial Fund lends to commercial pilot students, I braced for confused looks. Aviation training? Like… flight school? Yes, exactly like flight school. 

What I didn’t expect was how quickly that confusion would turn into curiosity, and how often that curiosity would lead to some of the most honest conversations I’d have with prospective LPs all year. Something about how unexpected the answer seemed to take people off script. They stopped asking standard diligence questions and started asking real ones.

That shift taught me something I now consider one of the most important lessons in private credit investor relations: the story behind what you lend into matters far more than the yield you put at the top of your deck. Because yield, in today’s market, is everywhere. Trust, real, earned, structural trust, is not.

The Crowded Room Nobody’s Talking About

Private credit has had an extraordinary run. Assets under management have grown from roughly $500 billion a decade ago to well over $2 trillion today, and the flow of capital shows no signs of slowing. For allocators, whether family offices, RIAs, or high-net-worth individuals, the pitch is compelling: floating-rate returns, low correlation to public markets, senior secured positions, and consistent income in a world where traditional fixed income underdelivered for years.

All of that is real. But what I started noticing, about two years into this role, was that the questions began to change, and rightfully so.

Allocators are no longer just asking, “What’s the yield?” They’re asking who else is in this space, and what crowding does to spreads over time. They’re asking what happens to borrowers if rates stay elevated longer than expected. And they’re asking how we know, concretely, that we actually understand the assets we’re underwriting, not just that we have a compelling thesis.

Those are exactly the right questions. And they highlight something important: not all private credit is created equal. As capital has moved quickly into the space, many funds have ended up offering similar-looking products backed by very different levels of underlying expertise. The marketing materials start to converge. Track records are often short. And the real differentiators are sometimes more about distribution than actual credit experience.

In an environment like that, skepticism isn’t just healthy. It is necessary. The allocators who are navigating private credit well today are the ones who look past the headline return and focus on the people and processes behind it.

What Aviation Training Lending Taught Us About Underwriting

When Stratus identified aviation training finance as a core focus, it wasn’t a marketing decision. It was an underwriting one. Commercial pilot pipelines have a structural supply problem that isn’t going away anytime soon. Airlines globally are projected to need hundreds of thousands of new pilots over the next two decades. At the same time, the training infrastructure, including flight schools, simulator programs, and accelerated certification tracks, has historically been underfunded by traditional lenders.

Banks don’t typically underwrite this kind of exposure. The collateral is non-standard, the borrowers are pre-income, and evaluating credit risk requires a working understanding of licensing pathways, employment outcomes, and aviation labor dynamics that most credit committees simply don’t have.

That’s exactly where the opportunity comes from. But it’s also where discipline matters most. What this niche reinforced for us, and what now anchors many of our LP conversations, is that genuine sector knowledge is a real risk mitigant. Not just the seniority of the lien. Not just the loan-to-value ratio. But a clear understanding of what you own, and why the borrower will ultimately repay you.

Those are not the same thing.

When we walk a family office through how FAA certifications work, what airline hiring pipelines look like, and how we think about downside scenarios in a weaker hiring environment, it leads to a very different kind of conversation. It moves beyond spreadsheets and into something more tangible. It builds conviction not because the numbers are attractive, but because the thinking behind them is clear.

And that’s where real differentiation tends to come from in private credit. Not scale, not branding, but depth of understanding that takes time to build.

Interestingly, this depth also shows up on the borrower side. The flight schools and training programs we work with aren’t just looking for capital. Many have been turned away by lenders who didn’t fully understand their business. When you can speak their language and demonstrate that understanding, the relationship changes. You are no longer just a source of capital. You become a partner in their growth. That dynamic has real implications for both credit performance and deal flow.

The LP Relationship Is Longer Than the Fund

One thing many managers are reluctant to admit is this: the capital raise isn’t the finish line. It’s the beginning of a relationship that, if done well, should outlast any single fund.

The family offices and RIAs we work with are thinking in longer time horizons. They’re not reallocating in and out of private credit every quarter. When they commit, they’re making a judgment not just about the strategy, but about the people behind it.

They’re asking whether they trust this team to make sound decisions when conditions change. Whether communication will be clear when things don’t go as planned. And whether their interests will remain aligned with the manager’s over time.

That shapes how we approach every interaction, from initial conversations to ongoing updates. We try not to treat communication as something tied to a schedule. If something changes in the market or in the portfolio, that is usually a reason to reach out, not wait.

Our approach has always been intentionally focused. Not because we have to be, but because we think it leads to better outcomes for both the portfolio and the relationships around it. When you have a smaller, more deliberate LP base, you are naturally more accountable. You cannot rely on volume or complexity to carry the relationship. You have to be clear, responsive, and consistent.

And in practice, it is often the smaller details that matter most. Remembering an LP’s preferences around liquidity. Understanding their broader portfolio exposures. Knowing when a conversation is helpful, even if it is not strictly necessary.

These may seem like small things, but over time, they compound. And in this business, that compounding shows up in trust.

What I’d Tell Any LP Considering Private Credit Today

The opportunity in private credit is real. The structural drivers, including banks stepping back from certain types of lending, demand for income in diversified portfolios, and the benefits of floating-rate exposure, are all still in place.

But the dispersion in manager quality is also real, and often wider than it appears on paper.

A few things are worth paying close attention to:

Understand the niche, not just the label. “Private credit” covers a wide range of strategies. What matters is whether the manager has real expertise in the specific areas they lend into. Ask them to explain their underwriting in plain terms. Ask what could go wrong in their portfolio and listen closely to how they answer.

Ask about the difficult credits. Every manager can talk about their wins. The more telling conversations are about the investments that didn’t go as planned. What happened, how it was handled, and what changed afterward. That’s where you see discipline and learning.

Treat communication as a signal, not a courtesy. How a manager communicates before you invest is usually a good indicator of what comes after. If interactions feel rushed or surface-level early on, that pattern tends to continue.

Match the vehicle to your liquidity reality. Private credit is illiquid. Not somewhat illiquid, but genuinely illiquid over the life of the investment. That is often where the return premium comes from, but it requires an honest assessment of your own liquidity needs before committing.

Pay attention to how the team views borrowers. This one is less quantitative, but it matters. Managers who see borrowers purely as exposures tend to approach the business differently than those who understand that borrower success and portfolio performance are closely linked.

The Skyward View

I think back often to those early conversations where aviation training would get a puzzled reaction. I get fewer of those now, partly because the opportunity is better understood, and partly because consistency over time builds credibility in a way no pitch deck can.

But those early moments were valuable. They created space for real conversations about why certain parts of the credit market remain underserved, what it takes to understand them well, and why staying focused can matter more than following broader market trends.

At its core, private credit still comes down to something relatively simple. Not just spreads or structures, though those matter, but whether the people managing capital understand what they’re doing, communicate honestly about it, and treat the relationship as something worth maintaining over the long term.

The funds that matter a decade from now may not be the ones with the most assets today. They will be the ones whose LPs never had to wonder where they stood.

Eljona Shkreli is the Head of Investor Relations at Stratus Financial Fund, a private credit manager specializing in aviation training finance. The views expressed here are of her own views and experience.

Eljona Shkreli
Head of Investor Relations
Stratus Financial Fund

Stratus Financial Fund I is a 506(c) passive income fund strategically designed to finance purpose-driven loans for commercial aviation training while delivering strong returns for investors. As part of Stratus Financial, one of the fastest-growing super-prime U.S. consumer credit strategies, the fund focuses exclusively on a massively underserved $2 billion market.

With a compelling preferred return, Stratus Financial Fund I serves as a cornerstone in private credit investment strategies. Our proprietary underwriting credit model, combined with a strict focus on lending to super-prime and prime borrowers, ensures a disciplined, high-quality approach to financing the next generation of commercial pilots while maximizing investor returns.