As PwC noted in a recent report, AI is also prominent in investment activity. Technology will become a core component of the fund design process, particularly around trading authorizations and hand-offs with human investors.
Regulators too are turning to automation. Using sophisticated analytical tools on large volumes of data, regulators can compare scenarios and address potential issues before they become full-scale market problems.
Firms need to prioritize data and control transparency to comply with increasing data requests from regulators.
The best of both worlds: Developing hybrid cloud capabilities
From small hedge funds to institutional money managers, financial sector players are now looking to hybrid cloud capabilities that will allow them to combine their own systems together with a hosted capability from a vendor to provide the new technology capabilities they need.
For firms with legacy systems, multiple systems can be integrated to create a best-of-breed solution, using a phased migration strategy so that solutions from a hosted managed service can be integrated on an asset class basis or at a regional level across different desks.
Cloud services present financial organizations with opportunities to cut costs, gain greater visibility on an enterprise-wide monitoring basis and increase operational agility.
Why plug-and-play solutions could be the answer
These new dynamics are bringing more cost effective plug-and-play solutions to the fore through integration platform as a service (iPaaS). Such solutions facilitate the connection of various systems so they can be automated.
In response to these needs, companies including Bloomberg have developed web APIs and open standards that allow clients to integrate in a way that makes systems behave as part of their own local workflows. These systems are highly configurable, ensuring the end user can customize integration of existing work-flows and implement new work-flows across transactions and valuations using web APIs to move and translate data. They are also designed to ensure firms can meet evolving regulatory, reporting and transparency requirements.
We are working to help a mid-tier regional broker based in Singapore launch a new retail and B2B fixed income trading platform. Using our trading systems technology and connectivity, the entire trading workflow is automated. The broker is able to launch the platform in multiple countries in the region as a result.
The financial services sector in ASEAN has demonstrated before that major economic shocks can be a catalyst for change, innovation and more cost effective ways of delivering new solutions to customers. The impact of COVID-19 will again test the sector’s ability to pivot – and determine the longer term winners and losers in this next normal. There is a greater need now, more than ever, to minimize wasted technology spend.
