68% of Asia fund managers remain unautomated in the funds industry

Calastone, the largest global funds network, has released its Global Funds Automation Report – “Global fund automation caught between future and past”, revealing that manual processes and antiquated technology remain the backbone of many asset managers’ operations, despite the industry’s desire to transform.

Fund managers and asset servicers have been looking to technology for decades to help grow their businesses and margins, and improve the overall experience for end-investors. The research surveyed nearly 600 respondents globally across the fund management industry to identify the latest trends driving the new era of automation within the sector. This survey examines not just how automated the industry is, but how automated it perceives itself to be, and asks how that differs by country, company and manager type and the driving forces within those groups.

Here are the key takeaways in the APAC markets for your reference:

1. Organisations based in Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand perceive themselves as ‘mostly’ or ‘fully’ automated. However 68% of organisations are still using fax machines to insource operations and remain unautomated in many areas.
2. Firms in APAC looking at automating manual tasks are putting more energy into truly transformative technologies such as DLT. Particularly in Singapore, there is a lot of DLT-related activity and a rapidly growing tokenisation market, further boosted by advances in AI and ML.
3. Geographical expansion is recognised as a main driver by organisations listed in Singapore (52%), followed by Thailand (38%), where more automation will be needed to facilitate that cross-border flow and to provide the kind of processing efficiency that global players will expect.
4. The top three main drivers of automation in Asia are client service (67%), revenue expansion (59%) and fund distribution (55%).
5. To automate operations, emerging markets such as Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia are prioritising ‘the basics’ such as orders and settlements; while established markets such as UK and Europe, meanwhile, which have already done that legwork, are looking at account opening.

The full report can be found here.