“If you don’t innovate in technology you will fall by the wayside”, according to one panellist at this year’s ALFI London Conference.
The panellist, who made the comments on a UCITS panel, warned the financial service industry that they must hire expert staff and build further expertise in-house in order to survive to 2025, at least.
He further commented that in asset management, the way forward is to “look forward to innovation for your whole organisation, not just certain parts of it. We are in a data-based business, we are still needing to build further expertise, there’s lots of complexity that doesn’t really go away.”
He added, in terms of assets under management, in order to distribute across different facets, different data formats need support.
The speaker explained that “innovation firms are going to have to have a research and development function”, solely with the future in mind.
Both big and small firms within the industry should have a good team of staff that are solely employed for that reason alone, he added.
Another panellist suggested that back office collection of data needs an increase of due diligence on the same platforms. He stated that technology is moving so fast that there’s “no single global warehouse” to manage the fast level and quantity of innovation.
One member of the panel said that though right now the industry is hindered by regulation, operations to comply with these regulations will become more commoditised, he also stated that there would be more scrutiny on anti-money laundering going forward.
