As published in Global Banking and Finance Review, here's a look at Steve Young's 'unlikely' predictions for asset management in 2018:
It would be a pleasant start to the year if, rather than believing the hype that Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is the panacea for every problem that the asset management industry is facing, we had a more realistic debate on where its deployment would be appropriate and genuinely disruptive.
Currently there is too much noise and not enough clarity on this subject. Blockchain is not, and never will be, the answer in isolation. It is an enabler and requires the business idea to be clearly specified in order to bring benefit. There are several areas of the asset management industry where Blockchain is not an appropriate technology on which to build new business models and other areas that may be ripe for transformation through models based on DLT.
Investment management would benefit greatly if there was more collaboration in the industry, from technology vendors through to asset managers. Every part of the industry could be more cooperative and less defensive; sharing costs, creating utility models and so on.
From the technology perspective, if the buyers and providers had a mind-set of open standards and open APIs, making it easy to integrate systems, everyone would move forward much faster.
For the full list, read the article in Global Banking and Finance Review.
