What are top investment priorities for financial firms?

By Gaia Lamperti

“In today’s rapidly evolving world, an optimized workflow is crucial and good clean data is key. Yet, firms are drowning in the complexity of managing and simplifying data without the technology and digital infrastructures in place to support its management, stifling transparency, agility and growth,” believes Vijay Mayadas, President of Capital Markets at global FinTech company Broadridge.

For this reason, investing in technology to better optimise data and modernise data management should be the top priority for financial services firms. For most of them, they already are. At least this is according to new research Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. compiled from a survey of 200 financial services professionals conducted at the recent SIFMA Operations Conference in May 2022.

Broadridge delivers technology-driven solutions that drive business transformation for banks, broker-dealers, asset and wealth managers and public companies. Broadridge’s infrastructure serves as a global communications hub enabling corporate governance by linking thousands of public companies and mutual funds to tens of millions of individual and institutional investors around the world.

The survey found that with as many as 98% of respondents’ companies investing in their front-to-back-office workflow management, more than one-quarter (27%) of respondents cite data management tools as their firm’s priority investment. In addition to data management, firms are also investing in AI and automation (23%), more human capital (13%), cloud-native capabilities (10%) for uniformity, and blockchain technologies (8%) to improve overall efficiencies.

Unlocking the value of data

It is well-known by now that optimizing and contextualizing data can lead to better data management and streamline internal workflows. However, 94% of firms are facing challenges around effective data use. The research found that more than half of the attendees (57%) confirmed their firms still have progress to make before they reach the advanced stages of their innovation and technology efforts. Legacy or outdated technology stands out as the biggest hurdle that firms face (27%), followed by poor data quality (23%).

“We hear from clients, and the survey findings highlight how firms are overwhelmed with the amount of data and limited in how to use it,” said Mayadas. “By assessing one’s tech stack and partnering with trusted providers, firms have the opportunity to maximize the capability of their data and improve their workflow management.”

After a year of job-hopping, it comes as no surprise that firms are also having a hard time finding the human capital to effectively leverage data. Nearly one-fifth (19%) of respondents told Broadridge that they are experiencing an inability to quickly test, onboard, validate or maintain datasets.

In 2020, for the second time in four years, the number of jobs posted by tech companies for analysis skills—including machine learning (ML), data science, data engineering, and visualization—surpassed traditional skills such as engineering, customer support, marketing and PR, and administration, according to data collected by Deloitte.

In the UK, there is significant demand for data skills, with companies recruiting for 178,000 to 234,000 roles requiring hard data skills. Almost half of businesses (48%) are recruiting for roles that require hard data skills, but under half (46%) have struggled to recruit for these roles over the last 2 years, found a government-backed report.