Leading technology provider for the buy side expects growth in Data-as-a-Service, a mainstream emergence of the analytics workbench and the continued appeal of private markets
New York, NY – February 16, 2021 – Indus Valley Partners (IVP), a provider of technology solutions and services to the buy side, has announced today its annual trend outlook for traditional and alternative asset managers as the industry continues to navigate the majority-remote work environment, margin compression and rapid consolidation.
“With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns last March, managers across the industry were propelled into uncharted territory that in turn forced them to rely on their existing technology and service providers to remain afloat,” said Gurvinder Singh, CEO of Indus Valley Partners. “As a result, those that did not already possess a business continuity plan backed by a digital-first operating model experienced serious strain on their core processes, leading them to seek ways to accelerate their digital transformation at a rate unlike one we have ever seen before.”
In the year ahead, managers have indicated their plans to keep this momentum going with an expansion of their technology budgets and a sustained focus on becoming digital-first in nature by homing in on their outsourcing and data management initiatives. With this, Indus Valley Partners has identified three trends that will coincide with the industry’s continued evolution, including:
- Growing Appetite for Data-as-a-Service (DaaS): Due to the failure of data projects to deliver quantified value, a growing appetite has emerged for Data-as-a-Service that is digital-first in nature from firms seeking data that is cleansed and normalized by providers on a fully managed basis. The industry will begin to see players, both large and small, shift toward this type of model so long as they have good digital-first providers enabling this service in an auditable manner and an internal scalable data layer to consume and stitch the datasets together for fast and more accurate analytics.
- The Analytics Workbench Becomes Mainstream: With the influx of information available and concurrent rise of native cloud platforms to enable faster analytics, front-office analysts are finding that they have to filter through the noise and manipulate data for it to be of any use. Because of this, the need for an “analytics workbench” in the user’s cloud platform of choice has emerged where firms can combine clean and wrangled big datasets with internal, cross-referenced and normalized operational data. Here, the classic operational data store (ODS) will play a critical role in enabling the front-office analytics workbench to help analysts derive quick and meaningful insights.
- Continued Allure of Private Markets: The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing near-zero or negative interest rates have created a strong disincentive to sit on piles of cash, leading many to look to private markets for a safe target return-type strategy to deploy their leftover capital. Since this space tends to suffer from fragmented workflows and spreadsheet-driven processes, more and more private fund managers are beginning to leverage technology to help increase their flexibility and reduce operational risk as their strategies scale. As a starting point, firms will have to invest in their core automation and accept the need to consolidate their datasets into one golden source to eliminate the back and forth that is currently involved using manual spreadsheets. This digital organization through the establishment of a golden data source will be the true indicator of success amongst managers as private markets continue to attract assets.
“Managers’ digital transformation is something that we as a firm have been stressing for years and although the pandemic has caused a slew of unfortunate circumstances that have derailed these plans, it has also spurred an environment that is now ripe for investment and opportunity. In 2021 and beyond, we anticipate that managers will keep a sustained momentum around their transformation as they continue to focus on improving their data management core competencies whilst also turning their attention to new markets for growth,” noted Singh.
About Indus Valley Partners
Founded in 2000, Indus Valley Partners has more than 140 global asset managers and private equity funds among its client base. $3.1 trillion of global hedge fund AUM is managed using IVP technology. Specializing in portfolio management technology for traditional and alternative asset managers, IVP provides flexible and modular solutions that can be tailored to the specific requirements of any portfolio or fund. IVP employs 500+ developers, associates and analysts servicing clients globally from offices in New York, Salt Lake City, London, New Delhi, and Mumbai. Learn more about IVP at www.indusvalleypartners.com.
