Changes afoot as Asian asset management heads in the right direction

Another successful year for FundForum Asia, a great buzz around the event and a lot of focus on the key themes of value, customer, and disruption, be it macro, regulatory, or digital. There is no doubt that the industry has to adapt to shifting external and internal forces, but how this is achieved is up for debate.

Fund managers, understandably, want to believe in the ongoing value of active management and that recent poor performance shouldn’t overshadow the experts’ ability to achieve alpha. We had some excellent and lively discussion over fee transparency, investor appetite and how asset and wealth managers are meeting the challenge set by their clients. The impact of digitisation was firmly on the agenda this year, in back office operations, KYC and compliance and of on distribution and front office functions.

Whilst there may still be a gap between rhetoric and reality, the Asian industry is moving in the right direction, proving the value of new thinking. For all the talk of digital, there seemed to be a consensus that a human touch remained a necessary component of the industry.  After all, asset and wealth management are people businesses, and it is when the industry loses sight of the people at its heart-  the investors – that its reputation will suffer. If you orient your product towards performance, then you are bound to fail and suffer churn. It needs to be about predictability, and predictability is transparency.  At the core of this transformation is a switch from a product-world towards a benefit-world; this is expressing itself in Asia and this a good thing.

We would like to think that FundForum  Asia contributed in some way to addressing the fundamental challenges and provided a key platform for ensuring a healthy and sustainable future for the business.