‘Broken’ data appears to be a significant problem affecting asset management front offices, but it has become an “accepted way of life”, a survey found.
Seventy-nine per cent of 100 asset management representatives said at least 9% of “in-bound” data in their front office was broken and required manual repair.
Out of this, 17% reported that more than 20% of their data required attention.
Nearly half of the firms had automation levels of less than 60% in trade execution flows, and another finding was that front offices were using ten or more databases to support nearly 40% of core investment data – data that covers customers, instruments and transaction databases.
This last finding reflected the “technological complexity of a fragmented front office environment”, said Simcorp, a systems firm that carried out the research with Adox Research, a tech adviser.
But IT budgets and the desire for investment to replace “inhibiting” legacy technology were increasing, Simcorp’s ‘Follow the money’ survey found.
Over 64% of buy-side tech buyers planned to upgrade their order management systems over the next three years, including by replacing them.
Brent Rossum, director, front office product management at Simcorp, said there was an abundance of legacy technology and added: “Fragmented infrastructure, manual reconciliation, and lack of automation are big concerns.”
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