Mike Maltby, Head of Market Strategy

We preach data centricity at Eagle because it is becoming essential for investment management organizations to have a solution that offers a controlled environment to navigate both ongoing and evolving compliance demands. The data centric approach is also followed by many of the firms that Eagle works closely with , such as Donnelley Financial Solutions, to deliver solutions to current and future regulatory requirements. For instance, last year the SEC proposed and has since passed wide-ranging changes that would introduce new monthly and annual reporting forms (N-PORT and N-CEN, respectively). The SEC now requires “census-type” information as well as portfolio reporting in which fund managers and registered investment companies must provide enhanced and standardized disclosures. The initiative is designed to enable transparency for investors and more thorough analysis by regulators.

With the specifics of the proposal now clear, the SEC identified that it will be seeking data related to the pricing of portfolio securities; information regarding repurchase agreements, securities lending activities and counterparty exposures; terms of derivatives contracts; and discrete portfolio-level and position-level risk measures to interpret fund exposure in changing market conditions. Both the N-PORT and N-CEN filings have already been incorporated into other amendments floated by the SEC, including the proposal in December 2015 for new derivatives rules for registered funds and business development companies.

Make no mistake, the demand for accurate and timely data is only going to increase as new regulatory rules are put in place. The SEC’s reliance on data and standardization will only increase the scrutiny on a firm’s ability to meet these heightened demands. Those that have a strong data platform that helps them keep pace with the evolving regulatory environment—without disrupting their organization each time a new rule or amendment is introduced — will have a distinct competitive advantage over those who cannot.

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Gartner’s Dale Kutnick, who will be speaking at Engage 2016, discusses how digital disruption in financial services will challenge traditional business and economic models.

This year at Eagle Investment Systems’ Engage 2016 client conference, the prospect of digital disruption will be a prominent theme for many attendees. Gartner Senior Vice President, Emeritus, and Distinguished Analyst Dale Kutnick, who will be presenting at the three-day event in November, spoke to Eagle ahead of Engage to highlight some of the key issues facing financial services companies as they prepare for the coming digital wave.

Eagle: We’ve witnessed growing interest in financial services from many of the largest and most well known tech and software companies, such as Google, Amazon, Alibaba, and others. Why should the incumbent operators in the sector view these companies and the growing pool of fintech startups as a potential threat?

Kutnick: The advance of the “digerati” into financial services hasn’t yet been all that pronounced, but we think that will soon change. If you look at how they’ve already altered the landscape in the payment-systems space — all in a relatively short period of time — you can get a real sense of the threat that these tech companies will pose to existing business models.

But, I don’t think you’re going to see a situation in which a disruptive technology puts everyone out of business. The bigger players are already adapting. Fidelity and Schwab, for instance, have introduced their own robo-advisory offerings to compete with Betterment, Wealthfront and all of the other automated wealth-management platforms.

In terms of preparing for the threat, there’s a big focus on becoming more agile. Among the bigger banks, as their back- and middle-office functions become automated, you’ll see innovation translate into far more streamlined and efficient operations.

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Marc Rubenfeld CIPM, Head of Eagle Solutions, EMEA/APAC

As volatility returns amid growing uncertainty in the economy and global markets, there is again a heightened focus on risk. For many investment firms, this renewed attention on potential worst-case scenarios came out of the financial crisis as regulators and investment firms sought to avoid a repeat of the 2008 meltdown.

While historically firms have focused simply on risk management as a single discipline, it can be more helpful to break it down into two distinct but complementary components; risk measurement and risk management. In treating these functions separately, firms are seeing both the benefit of an independent way of measuring risk and of aligning the risk measurement function with the performance measurement function. Furthermore, by using a single, high-quality dataset to support unified risk and performance analysis, firms are able to achieve new insights and more consistent results. This is a subject that I have discussed at conferences this year across Europe and Asia, most recently at the FTF Performance Measurement Europe conference in London.

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