Finding help with breaking into new markets and facilitating asset inflows are the top priorities for many fund management operational bosses, research has found.
Simcorp, an investment management systems provider, said 49% of the 100 European buy-side heads of operations that responded to its survey stated ‘support of entry into new markets’ was their top strategic priority for 2019. The second-place priority for 48% of them was ‘facilitating asset inflows’.
The survey asked for people’s top three priorities and Simcorp said the findings suggested a change of tack in the asset management industry in the last 12 months with a “renewed focus on growth opportunities as firms attempt to regain lost ground”.
Driving performance (47%) was the third most-voted priority, outweighing priorities concerned with decreasing operating costs.
However, achieving automation, along with the creation of a ‘golden source’ of data – or ‘investment book of record’ – also continued to rank high in strategic priorities with 41% also set to adopt multi-asset enabled investment platforms.
“Despite a turbulent year of new regulations, geopolitical uncertainty, fee compression and M&A, the findings suggest the European buy-side has turned a corner, with a new forward-thinking outlook,” Simcorp said.
Other findings were:
- Accurately forecasting cash, and the centralising of data were the top two front-office challenges.
- Data collection and efficiently processing unstructured data were the main priorities across alternative investments and private debt.
- 58% of managers were set to limit investments into exotic products as a way of mitigating this challenge.
The findings are in Simcorp’s ‘European InvestOps Report: ‘Achieving operational agility and outperformance’.
©2019 funds europe
