• Blog
  • 1 Min Read
  • March 29, 2019

Survey Reveals Top Concerns of Investment Firms – and How They’re Handling Them

Facing the challenges of global scalability and centralizing investment accounting data, investment management firms are largely turning to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) as they look to modernize their operating models.

Those are some of the key findings of a recent survey conducted by Clearwater Analytics and WBR Insights. The 2019 Investment Operations Survey asked 200 investment management professionals about their operational infrastructure and priorities to better understand their data-related practices and substantiate market trends.

The survey found an overwhelming 93% of respondents have either already adopted SaaS as part of their operating models or plan to do so within two years.

What’s holding them back? Legacy systems are the biggest obstacle to adopting SaaS, according to the survey. Firms have built their operations around legacy systems, and it has proven difficult to disentangle from on-premise solutions.

The survey results also revealed firms are predominantly managing middle- and back-office functions using a hybrid of outsourced and internally owned processes. The one exception is client reporting, which continues to be handled primarily using in-house manual processes.

Find out which investment data-related issues are top of mind for operations leaders, which area of their back-office operations presents the biggest opportunity for efficiency gains, and other notable issues by downloading the 2019 Investment Operations Survey Report.