Several trends, including wide-spread digitalization and ever-increasing regulations, are pressing investment management organisations to strengthen their infrastructure. These changes are also influencing their market place, their market approach and are challenging their very own organisational set-up.
Market Place
Customer Success
Nowadays customers expect to get reports on-demand and accessible anytime, anywhere and by any means. Some might still prefer to receive in the old-fashioned way, however, over time everyone is going to adhere to this new way of communication.
This is a very hot and important topic that needs the highest attention from all participants in this service area.
Data Integrity
Whichever method of distribution is being used, the integrity of your reports, its content and fundamental data needs to be unquestionable. As a result, back-office operations and systems controls must be given the highest attention from your organisation.
Speed
When all the above is in place, it may become irrelevant if the information is not distributed fast enough. That’s why appropriate automation mechanism come into play along with frequent and crucial checks and balances so that data integrity and speed are addressed.
Easy Access
Since your audience is most probably very diverse in terms of digitalization, the handling of your information should be very easy and user-friendly. Easy access to start with and followed by intuitive walk through of your information offering. Also a chatbox with on-line Q&A and support will increase the usage and enthusiasm of your offering and, as a result, of your organisation.
Organisational set-up
The organisational set-up is extremely important in order to support your objectives and to process all activities as fast, efficient and with the least manual intervention as possible.
SaaS versus On Premise
In terms of software it becomes a very compelling decision to have your infrastructure operated in the cloud. This way, you have no concerns for the correct hardware and its maintenance anymore as well as no concerns for timely and correctly executed software updates. This takes away manual work and interfacing, which is only increasing the risk on errors and loss of time. Some organisations stick to the belief that their software should be hosted on-premise with the argument of customer and account privacy/security, but nowadays, that is a non-argument when even governments, intelligence and security services have their main systems handled by AWS and Microsoft Azure, providing the highest possible security measurements available.
Another great advantage of running your software in the cloud is scalability, which is quite hard to achieve when running on-premise.
Also running your systems in the cloud will further enhance the processing of your organisation’s activities and will ensure that all workflows are based on consistency, as well as uniformity and on top guaranteeing that no exceptions or ad-hoc events are altering these workflows. The result will be easier error-free flows of data through your processes. Even with exceptions and manual interruptions taking place now and then, the percentage falls to a minimum.
This way you will use organisational intelligence wisely and effectively, therefore using the digitisation and enhanced automation at its full strength.
European Regulations
The ever-increasing introductions of new regulations in the financial services sector by the EU is leading to enhanced automation in order to keep expenses and investment in human capacity to reasonable levels.
Financial operations departments have to address these EU rules in a market that has seen eroding margins since the financial collapse of 2008. Additional checks and balances and new reporting requirements cannot be addressed without proper automated alerts and compliance checking with the human eye at the end of the decision tree.
The following EU directives will become in effect as of July 2021 and need to be addressed by investment firms: the European Banking Authority (EBA) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) are working with the European Commission on the review of the prudential rules for investment firms. The two authorities are collecting data and have published reports and other documents on the subject.
Investment firms authorized under the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) provide a range of services and activities and these will fall under the new upcoming EU directives 2019/2034 (IFR) and 2019/2033 (IFR) where, under the investment firms’ prudential framework, a significant number of mandates have been given to the EBA to deliver regulatory changes on the following areas: thresholds and criteria for investment firms to be subject to the CRR, capital requirements and capital composition, the supervisory review process, supervisory reporting, disclosure requirements, variable remuneration, governance, mandates related to economic, social and governance (ESG) risks and supervisory convergence.
Below are thematic areas covered by the EBA mandates
Also see for reference.
Still the good news is that there are software providers offering to soften the burden of additional workload, addressing compelling demands from the market place and supporting organisational efficiency.
Contact BRITech today to learn more about our Enterprise solutions.
For more info: Ger van Nijkerken
Ger has spent the first part of his career as Financial Director at several organisations like Apple Computer Europe. Since mid 90’s he became involved in commercial assignments and ever since he worked at different organisations to hunt for new business and setting-up new sales organisations in new territories. He also worked for more than 12 years as Regional Director for Advent Software (part of SS&C) to build out the BeNeLux, build-up the Middle-East and Pacific. Since 2013 he is running his own Software House and represents BRITech in the BeNeLux and other parts of Europe.