The asset management industry has to face three different types of challenges.
1. First, a new environment, with the rather new fierce competition between bigger and bigger players, with the emergence of new players (SWF, pension funds…), the low rate environment, the changes in regulatory constraints. One of the ambitions of this paper is to present how to cope with the current environment.
2. Second, the emergence of megatrends: how to play demographic challenges, climate change, technological revolution, innovations, how to play social, ethical, and behavioural values… The second ambition is to answer this question: how to invest and make money in investing in megatrends and disruptions?
3. Third, to cope with a real disruption: how will what we can call Watsonisation (the development of cognitive computing), Googlisation (the availability of a greater volume of data), Amazonisation (the power of platforms), Uberisation (hatching new business models) and Twitterisation (doing business in an increasingly connected and collaborative world) … reshape – or not – the asset management industry? Last question to address: how to adapt business models, survive, be efficient and profitable in such a changing environment? Tech remains one of the largest sectors in the world economy, but in today’s new economy, practically all corporations – small and large – are in technology, directly or indirectly.
Some of these questions can be addressed to any company that manages assets and risks: insurance company, pension funds, central bank, endowment, mutual funds…
