Asset Management Technology

An asset management industry under margin pressure is turning to data as a source of reduced costs and increased revenues. More efficient handling of data is expected to raise productivity, improve investment product design, tighten and expand distribution, make compliance easier and enable firms to comply meaningfully with ESG mandates. So a lot is being asked of data. The question is how soon rising expectations can be fulfilled, and who will do the work of clearing the obstacles to achievement of these goals.

It was a State Street CEO who first opined in the late 1990s that global custodians were in the data business. 20 years on, one of his successors is leading a bank that is updating that idea for an asset management industry awash with data but plagued by inefficiencies from the front office to the back. Alpha, the open architecture data management platform State Street has built for asset and wealth managers, is led by a former PwC partner called John Plansky who joined the bank four years ago. He told Dominic Hobson the story of how Alpha came about, where it is going and why it is all about data, not technology. 

David Barry is global head of hedge fund product at Apex Group, which provides third party fund administration, management company, custody and banking services to alternative asset managers and family offices. In our recent webinar on the Future of Fund Accounting he mentioned a number of areas in which Apex is using new technologies. Dominic Hobson caught up with him again to understand more about how the firm is using AI and blockchain to enhance service capabilities as well as improve operational efficiencies.

A SUMMARY AND FULL REVIEW OF THE DISCUSSION AT THE WEBINAR ON 29 JULY 2020 Part I

A SUMMARY AND FULL REVIEW OF THE DISCUSSION AT THE WEBINAR ON 29 JUNE 2020 Part I