Buy-Side Trends: Open Architecture, Multi-Asset Strategies, and ESG

Buy-Side Trends: Open Architecture, Multi-Asset Strategies, and ESG

FactSet’s Danielle Karr, Senior Vice President, Senior Director of Research Strategy, recently spoke with Cutter Associates at their Advance Together member meeting to discuss the advantages of platform consolidation and open architecture solutions to reduce the noise in day-to-day tasks, the importance of multi-asset strategies, and growth in the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data space.

Consolidation has been a growing trend over the past couple of years. For financial professionals, supporting and maintaining multiple disparate systems to meet their workflow needs is a huge burden. Consolidation reduces overhead cost and creates opportunities for economies of scale; in turn, there are fewer disparate negotiations. Other benefits are that rollouts and training plans can be set at an enterprise level and most importantly, and in many cases, consolidation creates a better user experience for those who no longer have to context-switch between different applications for different tasks. This is all happening as we see assets under management (AUM) moving from active strategies to more of a blended approach (active, passive, thematic, and ESG-focused alternatives).