2018 started off with a bang. Capital markets practitioners and asset managers alike scrambled to get into the office to meet the MiFID II implementation deadline. We at Eze pulled off a monumental effort to get everyone ready, and so far, kick-off has gone smoothly, aside from some industry-wide growing pains.
At the start of this new year, we see several fundamental trends driving the need for technology in the asset management industry.
-
Increased investment strategy complexity means asset managers need to employ sophisticated systems that can handle differentiated investment strategies, provide depth of reporting to prove differentiation, and supports the rapid pace of change and flexibility to innovate.
-
Continued pressure on management fees means the ability to generate operational alpha will become paramount for mid-sized managers to compete. Automation and efficiency are paramount to managing profitability.
-
Compliance and transparency will continue to drive much of the focus for asset managers in 2018. Compliance and risk reporting are table-stakes for many investors and regulatory regimes. The continually rapid pace of regulatory developments requires real-time reporting, audit trails and automated feeds.
These trends promise to make 2018 even busier than 2017 for the asset management community, and here at Eze, we anticipate a very busy year indeed.
We’re continuing to invest in our vision: creating a seamless platform to serve the entire investment management ecosystem. This means bringing together all of the disparate operational processes and interactions that occur between counterparties in the course of the investment lifecycle. Imagine a world where asset owners, fund managers, executing brokers, primes, administrators, limited partners, market data vendors, TCA providers, risk managers and regulators are all coming together within one simple, accessible, transparent ecosystem. In this scenario, any investment process can bring in new participants quickly and easily, and launching new strategies and entering new markets would take days, not months.
We’re working toward this goal in two ways: continuing to invest in our award-winning Eze Investment Suite, and continuing to build out our native born-in-the-cloud Eze Eclipse.
Eze Software attracted 278 new clients in 2017, with firms continuing to scale up their usage of Eze Investment Suite. More than 70 existing client expanded their usage of the platform to meet their growing needs. We anticipate more investment in this area in 2018, enabling even more smart tools, compliance capabilities and easy workflows for our growing clients. Anticipate smoother workflows, more advanced modeling, analysis and execution capabilities, and even tighter integration.
Twenty emerging managers in 2017 signed on to Eze Eclipse, our native born-in-the-cloud application. Though most of our customers already use Eze Investment Suite in the cloud, this platform takes cloud application usage one step further by reimagining the entire investment process in the cloud from start to finish. That means better-than-ever usability design, investment process elements that interact flawlessly, and a lot of flexibility in customizing technology for your workflow needs. Although at the outset Eze Eclipse was conceived as the best fit for start-up and emerging managers, expect to see us scaling up the functionality to meet the needs of larger firms.
Finally, Eze Software continues to evolve and optimize for today’s market environment. We’ve seen many firms consolidate in 2017, many due to the need to innovate operationally. Eze has been investing and innovating in this area as well, from improving our client service model, to expanding our partnerships with the best specialists across asset classes and investment processes, to enhancing the capabilities of our talent. Expect to see us doing more hiring, more training, and optimizing how we respond to your inquiries.
To follow our progress, please be sure to subscribe to our blog. We look forward to working with all of you in 2018.