Across financial services, analytics, data and digital applications are cutting out intermediaries, compressing value chains, stripping out costs and ripping up assumptions. It’s called reinventing business models. Or creative disruption. And now it’s asset management’s turn on the chopping block.
Across financial services, analytics, data and digital applications are cutting out intermediaries, compressing value chains, stripping out costs and ripping up assumptions. It’s called reinventing business models. Or creative disruption. And now it’s asset management’s turn on the chopping block.
Brace for impact
So far, our industry has been slow to embrace new technologies. The current offering and way of working often date back 10 years. High fees sustained a labour-intensive model, and it was widely believed that strong investment performance would compensate for any inefficiencies. These beliefs were all true, right up to the moment that there no longer were. Today, fees are under relentless pressure. From fiduciary and index-tracker to LDI, there’s no place to hide. Clients demand lower costs on top of high performance.
The revolution will be digitized
Going forward, with margins unlikely to recover, something has to change. Just as we have seen elsewhere, the digital technologies that are turning banking, lending and insurance upside down, are now changing asset management. It’s inevitable. Unavoidable. The question is: who will lead the change? Our industry, or the tech giants?
So MatchingLink was born in 2017: a visionary start-up, founded by industry insiders who want to excite asset managers about IT. MatchingLink aims to:
- liberate smart people from tedious manual processes.
- eliminate the gap between asset and asset owner.
- help the industry discover more sustainable ways to be profitable.
These aims are more important than ever. Therefore, we are introducing this formula:
Software + Services = Amazing Solutions
Our solutionsSoftware + Services = Amazing Solutions
IT is a powerful enabling technology. We believe in the huge potential of IT and we want to do more to help our clients. That is why we reinvented Matchinglink:
By adding services to our existing IT and asset management capabilities we create the organization that knows and delivers amazing asset management organizations.
Matchinglink is a native digital organization that knows asset management inside out. We have now equipped it with consulting and implementation ability. To take on any information problem that asset managers face, to understand it, to structure it and to implement and deliver the best information processing organization.
True native digital means that we are digital by design, it’s in our DNA. Starting with your business objectives, redesigning your operating models, reengineering your processes, and deploying technology. Using a simple 4-step approach:
- Discovery
- Definition
- Design
- Delivery
MatchingLINK = Digital Open Source Community
We reinvented Matchinglink. And now we are ready to reinvent your business. Offering our services and offering our network. Linking experts and solutions to your business. We believe that the way to serve you is to offer the best capabilities in the market. Sometimes homegrown within Matchinglink, other times enabled by our network.
Our solutions
Separate technological innovations are now converging to create a new way to run investments.
Combined these trends create investment organizations that are nimbler, with substantially lower IT costs, offering products like AI based portfolio optimization, fully automated LDI management and seamless reporting functions.
There can be total transparency for the ultimate asset owner on any aspect they consider relevant. In the past, economies of scale used to be able to compensate outdated systems, the gap with technology-driven challengers will now become unsurpassable.
Cloud Based Computing
Processing power, storage, applications. Anytime, anywhere, in any quantity you need. That’s what today’s cloud-based computing is offering. Connecting departments, geographically dispersed business units, suppliers and your clients. Scalability at your fingertips. Paid per usage. This is todays reality.
API's
Seamless integration with existing legacy application infrastructures with API’s. The automatic connection between software packages changes the strategic IT perspective. Asset management software consisted of heavy, expensive packages that ideally served a wide range of activities to prevent 'island automation'. With today’s API’s you can have a state of the art application landscape with the level of integration of legacy ERP like solutions.
Data Management
Data is the fuel of this age. When everything is digitized, data is available on every aspect of the business. ESG questions about Carbon footprint, labour conditions or raw material use, management questions about footfall, car park use or fashion sales. Financial questions about exposures, markets and leverage. Everything becomes instantly available creating a radical transparency.
Integrated Workflow Technology
Much time in asset management is spent on administrating the actual investment process, often in separate tools, or by hand. Integrating these tasks into asset management software frees up much time and attention to focus back on investment management itself. Having a smooth integrated workflow technology also removes laborious communications between tasks and between departments.
Artificial Intelligence
The most powerful technology of all: Artificial Intelligence. Many tasks previously considered outside of the capability of a computer are now automatable. AI is proving better at optimizing portfolios than experts and is proving better at finding trading opportunities. Just as in flash-trading, the expert will always be there, but in a much-changed role and capacity.
