May 5 (Reuters) - Individual investors are likely to see

a growing array of financial products containing private credit

heading their way in the coming months and years, financial

executives said at the Milken Institute's annual global

conference on Monday.

While only a handful of exchange-traded funds and other

products aimed at investors who are not high-net-worth buyers

have been approved or launched so far, senior figures from

banks, asset management firms and private equity firms said this

roster likely will grow.

"I think that traditional asset managers will be our largest

clients in the future," said Marc Rowan, co-founder and CEO of

Apollo Global Management ( APO ), during a conference panel.

"The new form of active management, I think, is not going to be

the buying and selling of stocks. It's going to be the addition

of private assets" to portfolios that until now have been made

up of publicly traded securities.

Apollo partnered with State Street Global Advisors to roll

out the SPDR SSGA Public & Private Credit ETF in

February. So far, the ETF has attracted meager inflows, analysts

say, and has only $54.7 million in assets, according to data

from VettaFi.

State Street could not immediately be reached for comment.

"It is going to be difficult to build a structure liquid

enough to satisfy SEC rules while offering meaningful exposure

to private credit," said Bryan Armour, ETF analyst at

Morningstar, who noted that the 10% of that State Street fund

that is allocated to private credit also carries a higher fee.

That is not stopping asset managers from trying. Last week,

Capital Group and KKR won SEC approval to issue two new

"interval funds" -- closed-end products that offer holders only

limited liquidity -- that will own both publicly traded and

private debt securities. In mid-April, Vanguard said it will

partner with Blackstone Inc ( BX ) to roll out similar products.

Vanguard declined any additional comment.

"I expect there to be a flurry of activity, in the next

year, of different firms getting together" as traditional asset

managers team up with private credit investors, Citigroup ( C/PN )

CEO Jane Fraser told another Milken Institute panel.

But the allure of opening a largely untapped corner of the

financial market to financial advisers and their retail clients

may collide with the realities of how difficult it is to

structure a private credit investment vehicle for this audience.

"It's really important to understand: illiquid is illiquid,"

said Jenny Johnson, CEO of Franklin Templeton, at the Milken

event.

"A liquid private credit investment product is a

contradiction in terms," said Michael Venuto, founder of Tidal

Financial Group, which helps asset managers roll out new ETFs.