Engaging with social media – the acid test for Asset Managers

Guest blog post by Ian Hallam, CEO, 3i Infotech
 

The technological environment for the Asset Manager is shifting at a rapid pace. It all hinges around data - and our hunger for it. People are consuming data at a startling rate following widespread technological and infrastructure improvements, such as the installation of the fibre optic network in 2000, and the resulting access to broadband internet services in most homes. Combined with more recent developments in smart phones and online forums, themselves original products of the tech programming and gaming sectors, consumption of data is now increasingly driven by social networking technologies. These technologies, once the mainstay of teenagers, are starting to proliferate into professional and business services.  

With this comes an increasing acceptance of online interaction, such that we now have business-oriented services like LinkedIn, combined with message platforms, such as Twitter. As such, the devices that we use day in and day out are converging to meet our requirements - helping us have access where we want and when we want. This means we’re always on the go, multi-tasking, bombarded by data - all fuelling our increasing desire for an instant response.

With this ever evolving environment in mind, the Asset Management community is faced with the needs of an increasingly technically savvy and data hungry investor. Technology providers can already provide the end investor with the ability to access their portfolio on their chosen mobile device at any given time. The differentiator will be in how the information is filtered and presented. The most competitive applications will enable a tailored portal to portfolio information, configured to operate to an individual’s settings and provide the ability to filter out unwanted information. The balance of discretionary and advisory service could potentially change as a result of applications providing access to the end investor for evaluations, investment model analysis, running ‘what-if’ scenarios and so on.  

So how will this assist the Asset Manager of the future? Those Asset Management firms that will take the lead will not necessarily just adopt the technology, but rather embrace it and look for ways to demonstrate even greater value. With the converged devices of the future it should be a very real scenario that clients can access a tailored dashboard via a mobile device, anywhere in the world, and be able to be advised on updates and portfolio operations in real time by their Asset Manager.