The impact of technology on the asset management industry is not undergoing a revolution, but an evolution, according to Jan Sturesson, founder of Resting, at this year’s Association of the Luxembourg Fund Industry (ALFI) European Asset Management Conference.
In a session discussing the impact of technology on the world of work, Sturesson said although there is currently a technology revolution, the industry is “overeducated but underskilled, overmanaged but underlead”.
He further indicated upskilling is essential for the European workforce to excel and completely new funds are needed, but questioned: “who has the business acumen for that, what business leaders will lead us there?”
Moderator of the panel, Sigrid Nygaard Johansen, chief commercial officer at KNEIP asked if there was resistance for this type of change.
Sturesson answered: “The leaders that will facilitate these opportunities and change will succeed. They need to think outside the box, but it’s better if they think without the box. The right kind of leadership could help people thrive and be empowered.”
James Denning, vice president of Europe for Automation Anywhere, added: “You need to differentiate that resistance between leaders and employees. We’ve seen thousands of automation platforms evolve, where companies are welcoming to technology.”
“When a business declares clearly to its employees what’s going to happen to their salary and their schedule, those transparent companies should thrive.”
Johansen also asked panellists what they thought was the number one risk to firms within the industry. Denning suggested that keeping and retaining automation engineers was the number risk.
Sturesson affirmed: “Human Resources will become Human Right skilling in the future. There will be a mission to create a new kind of CEO—chief endorphin officers.”
Johansen then asked the panellists how they would describe a “digital worker”.
In answer to this, Sturesson stated: “It’s a human being who is very bold but humble in what they do, but who understands how automation can help us [the industry] to work better and control the technology to work for humans. They should also have a clear ethical understanding.”
Denning concluded: “We should give the high repetition, rules-based and high degree of accuracy jobs to robots. Leave empathy-related roles and everything on the creative side to people.”
