Funds Congress Highlights
Harnessing AI in Asset Management: Navigating a Transformative Landscape

The deployment of AI and other digital value creation levers has the potential to drive transformative change in the asset management industry. Yet success in integrating technology-led applications may depend on a willingness at the executive leadership level to take a business-led approach to questions surrounding the deployment of AI-based solutions while also navigating an array of industry-specific considerations.
Understanding the potential: In an industry characterised by fee pressures, margin constraints and perennial volatility in the capital markets, AI appears to offer plentiful opportunities for disruption and for transformative change achieved through enhanced productivity. Early applications are likely to be seen in the search for efficiencies in middle- and back-office tasks and the automation of investment research. Others will seek to gain from innovations in product delivery systems or by developing sophisticated solutions to front-end tasks such as intuitive client interfaces. For all players, choosing the appropriate AI-based solution will be a key decision.
Regulations, governance and trust: Successful integration of AI will require navigating an array of industry-specific considerations, including the role of regulators and the primacy of data protection and privacy. Indeed, the question of governance lies at the heart of the AI narrative: guardrails at the policy level in the form of legislation and regulation, and – in a world in which deep fakes will be ever easier to produce – solutions at the fund management level on the issue of trust. Mitigating the risks, most believe, will open the floodgates to a far more widespread application of AI in the funds industry.
Business-led integration: Taking a business-led approach to AI adoption will pay dividends to those seeking to benefit from AI and other digital value creation levers. Ask not what the technologies can do, some advise, but rather what challenges within an organisation exist that might be solved through technology. An emphasis on the potential of AI to transform the human experience can help guide stakeholders through the transition and ensure that AI solutions are crafted to meet actual business needs, rather than simply being applied for their own sake. The most critical factors for success? Effective leadership at the executive level, a considered selection of technology tools, and adequate training.
Digital transformation beyond AI: While highly significant in itself, AI of course forms part of a broader digital transformation in asset management powered by the search for cost efficiencies, greater productivity, risk mitigation and brute market forces. The potential for AI to unlock unprecedented value, however, seems set to establish it not as a fleeting trend but as a cornerstone of the funds industry of the future.