Geoff Hodge is President and Chairman of Milestone Group, an investment automation business.
What are your expectations for 2022?
Our prediction for 2022 is that we will see an evolution of industry focus on ensuring accurate NAV prices for funds, with organizations zeroing in on ensuring that correct prices are applied to fund assets, particularly hard to value assets and those requiring a fair value determination.
How will the pandemic’s consequences continue to play a part in trends for 2022?
While perhaps not a particularly radical trend, we would see a significant shift in recognition that it is time to industrialize accurate NAV prices for funds of fund infrastructure through automation. The indicators of this trend have become visible because of working from home exposing weaknesses in current processes, along with regulatory attention on valuation accuracy by both the SEC in the United States and the FCA in the United Kingdom.
What trends are getting underway that people may not know about but will be important?
The evolution of industry focus on ensuring accurate is a trend which is consistent thematically with increased industry attention on all aspects of the end-to-end process necessary to produce accurate NAVs for funds and their investors. The trend will unify fund boards and pricing committees with their operational teams and external suppliers who collectively give effect to ensuring prices are correctly applied for both internally managed and outsourced fund accounting scenarios. We expect to see fund managers taking more direct control through digitalization of this critical function in co-operation with their outsource providers.
