Exception-based workflows
We observe 3 primary asset management industry trends in 2025. These have held for the past 1-3 years, but have morphed somewhat in response to market conditions, the rapid acceleration of AI and preference shifts among institutional investors and asset allocators.
The trends we’ll cover are:
- The rise of private markets
- System consolidation, AI-readiness and getting portfolio data correct
- The growing interest in Separately Managed Accounts (SMAs)
- Plus some bonus trends at the end
1. Private assets
The first investment management industry trend, is that assets flow into alternative investments. We won’t cover the rationale here (e.g. quest for alpha), but merely recognise that it’s happening. Alternative asset management trends that we observe include:
- Traditional managers are developing investment strategies with private assets, such as real-estate, private equity and infrastructure.
- Asset owners are increasingly broad in their portfolios (across both public and private markets).
- Digital assets are slowly, but surely, becoming more accepted by institutional investors. The rush to invest in this asset class hasn’t happened, but the interest remains. More and more asset managers are asking how to prepare, primarily for crypto, so that they’re ready to launch investment products when/if the market demand arrives
Curious to see what asset classes Limina supports and in what way? Check out our asset class web page!
2. System consolidation, data foundation & preparing for AI
Almost all investment managers are looking for an all-in-one, silver bullet provider. The primary drivers behind this are:
2A. Cost (direct and indirect)
Costs are, and have been, the focus of investment managers for a long time. According to our research, 70% of investment managers are concerned about system costs.
As illustrated in the image here, not all costs come as vendor license fees. Frustratingly, vendors hide their pricing and try to obfuscate what you’ll actually pay in the end. At Limina, we take the opposite approach, believing long-term relationships are more valuable than short-term tactics. Consequently, you can get your own pricing quote here (no “contact sales” or “give us your email first”).
Beyond pricing, we’ve found that the most significant cost savings come from workflow efficiency. We’ve seen up to 50% of operational resources reduced, and Front Office users spend less than 15 minutes on portfolio and order management workflows per day on average. All by adopting Limina.
2B. View all assets + cash, and trust what you see
An increasing number of investment managers are coming to us at Limina because they want to manage all assets in one system:
- They want to see cash in one central place. When portfolio managers simulate changes in one place, seeing all its implications means the cash buffer can be reduced and performance increased. It’s not about making better investment decisions but rather calibrating those decisions with higher accuracy to squeeze out a smidge more performance without increased market/operational risk.
- They want workflows (Front Office and operations) to be in one system for all assets. Centralising all investments in one place, so nothing is caught as a surprise “T+1 in a report”.
2C. Speed to market
Mainly applicable to asset managers, regardless of whether investors are retail or institutional, is being able to launch or change products quickly. When the market moves from one allocation (e.g. listed emerging markets) into another (e.g. domestic private markets), being fast to market is a competitive advantage.
You might not consider this a “trend”, which is fair. The trend is the second-order effect, i.e. asset managers are preparing to be nimble and fast, without necessarily knowing what they need to launch next. More want to be ready to move into any region or asset class and attract capital when it moves.
“Single source of truth” isn’t a solution to your data challenges
An all-in-one solution doesn’t solve all of a firm’s data problems. Some can solve a subset of data challenges, but just because a system covers many functional areas doesn’t mean it solves data issues. “A single source of truth” is a buzzword that means data is stored once, but it says nothing about how that data is controlled or how users can consume it.
It’s easy to forget that the basics must be established before focusing on the next big thing. The previous asset management technology trend within data was “big data”, and now it’s AI. But the prerequisite is to get data right. For example, our research finds that 75% of Front Office users – before using Limina - don’t trust the portfolio data they see (cash being the most considerable uncertainty). How on earth is AI going to work, if data isn’t correct to begin with?
3. More SMAs
Institutional investors increasingly request Separately Managed Accounts (SMAs) instead of investing in pooled vehicles. This creates an entirely new operating model that institutional asset managers have been used to for a while, but that is quite complex for hedge fund managers, who are used to managing one, or just a few, funds.
This investment management trend adds to the demands of processes and systems. Each account can have its own process steps, deadlines, custodians, etc.
Limina’s Investment Management Solution support all the workflows you need with automation capabilities and a central operations control centre to ensure everything is on track. See a no-strings-attached demo today.
Other asset management industry trends
Other trends in investment management that are of lesser strength than the above include:
- Continued fee pressure (allocators want more for less)
- Passively managed funds and ETFs keep growing – at the expense of active management. However, it’s worth noting that the rise of SMAs has made the actively managed capital less transparent
- Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity among asset managers ebbs and flows, with a recent spike of activity in Sweden due to pension reforms. Hedge funds are still seeing very little of this (and of course, by the nature of the type of firm, asset owners see virtually no M&A)
- M&A on the provider side has increased significantly. Fund administration has been on a consolidation journey for a decade, and software vendors have just started. Custodians are possibly at an early stage of starting to move into software.
- Outsourcing is slowly growing, both in the middle and back office, as well as in outsourced trading.
Exception-based
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