In a market defined by turbulence and fee compression, investment firms find it harder than ever to prosper.
Increasingly, success depends on one critical asset: data.
Accurate, timely and comprehensive data enables managers to make informed decisions, optimize performance, manage risk and stay compliant.
Yet despite its importance, many firms continue to struggle with how to acquire, organize and use data effectively across the enterprise.
In this post, we’ll highlight the top data challenges firms face and examine how technology can support enterprise-wide data management and access.
Top 5 Data-Related Challenges that Hamper Data Usability & Insights
1. Rising Data Complexity as Firms Adjust Strategies
According to Accenture’s Future of Asset Management survey, targeted, personalized products are set to be a major growth area, especially as outperforming the market becomes tougher.
Investors increasingly want ETFs, separately managed accounts and tailored portfolios. But meeting these demands often comes with a data headache, requiring firms to manage bigger, more complex data sets from multiple sources in a different format and under tighter regulatory scrutiny.
Without modern tools, aggregating and normalizing this information means costly manual workflows that slow decisions, introduce errors and make it harder to deliver the high-quality, personalized experiences investors expect.
2. Legacy Technology Impedes Data-Driven Decision Making
Morningstar reports that 93 percent of asset managers plan to expand their use of analytics to improve investor experience and outcomes.
The goal is clear: managers want to digest portfolio information, analyze data and act on insights faster—whether refining investment strategies or doubling down on successful distribution approaches.
Yet legacy systems often get in the way. Slow, fragmented tools make it difficult to extract insights quickly enough to be actionable, leaving firms at risk of missed opportunities and frustrated clients.
3. Need for Operational Efficiency & Generating “Operational Alpha”
Another key finding from the Future of Asset Management survey: While asset managers know they need to leverage technologies like AI and automation, 72 percent don’t see themselves as a “leading firm” in digital maturity.
About two-thirds of survey respondents (64 percent) said they are actively expanding their partnerships with financial technology companies.
By entrusting functions like data management to external partners, managers can unlock economies of scale, improve operational efficiency and access specialized expertise—freeing them to focus on core product development and enhancing the investor experience.
But to succeed with this strategy, firms must have strong oversight. Without it, they risk losing visibility into how data is handled or whether outsourced workflows align with compliance obligations and service standards.
4. Increasing Investor & Regulatory Demands for Transparency
Investment managers must demonstrate to both clients and regulators that their reporting is timely, accurate and backed by clear data lineage. As Deloitte highlights, achieving this requires a strong data strategy, one that ensures firms work with high-quality, trusted data across the organization.
Reliable, well-governed data not only strengthens investor confidence but also enables firms to keep pace with evolving regulatory standards.
To meet these rising expectations, managers and their service providers should invest in robust operational resilience strategies, ensuring that critical data remains accessible, accurate and audit-ready at all times.
5. Employing Data and Analytics for a Competitive Edge
Maximizing alpha generation is a primary focus for any firm.
But as Deloitte reports, larger asset managers—those with greater capital reserves—have an advantage in investing in the technology supporting this goal.
Although able to be more nimble, smaller firms, by contrast, often face operational and data-related constraints that weaken their ability to compete.
Without modern tools, these firms risk slower decision-making and missed opportunities. Recapturing competitiveness requires a shift: investment managers must prioritize enhanced data and analytics capabilities. By doing so, they can expand strategies, improve performance and adapt more effectively as market demands evolve.
The Product Mindset: Expanding the Value of Data in Investment Management
Research from McKinsey reinforces these findings, showing that many organizations still rely on outdated approaches that limit the value of their data.
In some firms, individual teams build their own data tools and processes—a grassroots approach that often creates silos, duplication and high costs. At the other extreme, firms attempt a centralized “big bang” strategy that aggregates data en masse but often fails to align with the specific needs of end users.
Neither path delivers lasting value.
Instead, McKinsey suggests a more sustainable model: managing data like a product. Just as with consumer products, data should be curated, high-quality, ready to use and complete with the structures and connections that make it easy to apply to meet different business challenges.
This approach creates reusable “data products” that can power multiple use cases today while laying the foundation for tomorrow’s needs.
With a product-driven data management model, firms can unlock the consistency, governance and scalability needed to meet their data challenges and move toward true data enablement.
Genesis Data Lens: Helping Investment Firms Put Data at the Center of Operations
Genesis Data Lens turns the idea of ‘data as a product’ into a practical reality for investment firms, giving them resources to harness their own investment data and make smarter, faster decisions.
The platform takes a holistic approach to data management. Investment data is curated, enriched and immediately ready to use, enabling users to quickly search, extract and act on insights by strategy, household or portfolio.
Because data is unified within Genesis, those insights connect seamlessly to purpose-built applications that span the full investment lifecycle – from front to back office. With the data pipeline taken care of, users don't need to do anything but consume the information.
A built-in business intelligence suite delivers pre-configured visualizations and advanced analytics—including performance returns—so firms can move with greater speed and confidence.
Learn More
With Genesis Data Lens, users don’t have to be data experts to make use of data.
Spend less time manually curating and manipulating data and more time acting on the insight derived from your investment information.
Learn how to leverage the power of your investment data to make more informed decisions.
