On the inflation front, wage growth continued to moderate. And for the first time in two-and-a-half years, a majority of our surveyed companies are not finding it challenging to hire workers. And finally, for BAAM, since the start of 2021, when we brought in Joe Dowling to lead the business, the BPS composite has been up every quarter, outperforming the 60/40 portfolio by approximately 1,200 basis points. Moving to the second key dynamic emerging in our business, our momentum in private wealth. Blackstone has been serving this channel with a dedicated organization for 13 years, and we are the clear market leader with nearly $240 billion of AUM. We built enormous trust with our investors by delivering outstanding long term performance, including 11% net returns annually from BREIT’s largest share class and 10% for BCRED.
We raised nearly $5 billion in the channel in Q4, including $3.6 billion for our perpetual vehicles. Subscriptions for perpetuals accelerated to $2.7 billion on January 2, reflecting the best month of fundraising from individual investors since June 2022. BCRED had its best month since May 2022, raising $1.1 billion in January, and our new private equity vehicle, BXPE, raised $1.3 billion in January, which we believe is the largest ever first close of its kind. BXPE will leverage the firm’s full breadth of investment capabilities in private equity, including buyout, secondaries, tactical opportunities, life sciences growth and other opportunistic strategies. At the same time, BREIT has weathered the storm in real estate markets and December repurchase requests were down over 50% from Q3 and down 80% from last January’s peak.
If current trends continue, we expect to be out of proration this quarter. BREIT’s semi liquid structure has worked as designed since launching the vehicle seven years ago by providing liquidity, while protecting performance. In six of those years, redeeming investors were fulfilled immediately. Over the past year, it took a little over four months on average to be substantially redeemed. We believe investors’ experience of receiving double the public REIT market over the past seven years with this semi liquid structure is proof of concept. We continue to be optimistic about our prospects in the vast and underpenetrated private wealth channel, given our performance, the investment we’ve made in distribution and our highly differentiated brand.
In addition to private wealth, we also have very strong momentum in the insurance channel. Our AUM grew 20% year-over-year to $192 billion, and we have clear line of sight to $250 billion over the next several years with existing clients alone. We expect to benefit from multiple engines of growth, as these clients execute pension risk transfers, additional annuity sales, new insurance block deals, and separate accounts for sector specific lending. Turning to the third key dynamic, the firm’s investment activity is accelerating. Following a choppy year, we deployed $31 billion in the fourth quarter, up 2.5 times from Q3, and committed $15 billion to pending transactions. We continue to emphasize key thematic areas, including digital infrastructure, enterprise software and energy transition.
In private equity, we’re privatizing two leading digital marketplaces, including Adevinta in Europe and Rover, my family’s favorite in the pet space. We also committed to acquire an energy services software firm in the US and an online payments business in Japan. In credit, borrower demand is multiples of supply today, and deployment in our credit, insurance and real estate credit businesses more than tripled in Q4 compared to the third quarter to $21 billion. And we’ve also been providing creatively structured capital solutions in TacOps. secondaries and BAAM. As Steve highlighted, we’re planting seeds for future realizations at a favorable moment. In closing, we’re optimistic on the path ahead with multiple powerful dynamics unfolding in our business.
The recovery will not be a straight line. But as always, our brand and track record will continue to drive us forward. And our shareholders stand to benefit from the firm’s substantial embedded earnings power over time. And with that, I will turn things over to Michael Chae.
Michael Chae : Thanks, Jon. And good morning, everyone. The firm delivered resilient performance in 2023. And as we move forward, beyond what we believe was a cyclical trough for key business lines, we are well positioned. I’ll first review financial results and then we’ll discuss the key elements of the forward outlook. Starting with results. Total AUM increased 7% year-over-year to new record levels, led by robust strength in credit and insurance. Total inflows reached nearly $150 billion for the full year, the third best in our history, despite the challenging fundraising environment, highlighting the firm’s expansive breadth of strategies. Fee earning AUM increased 6% year-over-year, while base management fees rose 7% to a record $6.5 billion.
Q4 represented the 56th consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth in base management fees at the firm. Fee-related earnings for $4.3 billion for the year or $3.58 per share, stable with the prior year, underpinned by the growth in management fees along with continued margin expansion, notwithstanding a decline in fee-related performance revenues. FRE margin expanded to 75 basis points to 57.8% for the full year, the highest level ever. Fee-related performance revenues were $859 million for the year, with the lower contribution of real estate, partly offset by a 51% year-over-year increase in these revenues from our direct lending business as it continues to grow and scale and impact to the firm’s financials. Distributable earnings were $5.1 billion in 2023 or $3.95 per common share.
