InvestOpsDaily
key takeaways
THE OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF INVESTOPS 2019
Key takeaways from
InvestOps Europe 2019
Buy Side COO Keynote: Creating a culture for
innovation - How to build a best-in-class oper-
ations division that eliminates silos and drives
the required changes within your business.
• Three key learnings: the importance of an
open ecosystem, relentlessly driving value
creation and innovation is hard work.
• We’re all experimenting with innovation labs,
but throwing money into an innovation lab and
it not going anywhere does not add value. Don’t
confuse movement with progress.
• The challenge of the mastery of technology
is not a technology challenge, it is a people
and a cultural challenge. By being open in your
ecosystem approach, have people thinking that
they are adding to the bottom line of an asset
management company empowers them.
• The responsibility of us in this room is that
people feel empowered. Create the circum-
stance that people can do their job.
Brexit Keynote: Preparing for no-deal - The fu-
ture of EU/UK Financial Regulation and how
you can future-proof your business beyond
October 31st.
• The industry has many hurdles to clear due to
Brexit, including CCP equivalence, the appli-
cation of the shared trading obligation (STO)
amid the potential for further fragmented
markets, as well as data sharing among UK and
EU authorities. The STO has been particular-
ly challenging, and questions remain about
whether authorities in the UK and the EU will
grant equivalence to trading venues. The recent
experience in June where the EU decided not
to extend equivalence was likely a short-term,
political move to shift liquidity into EU jurisdic-
tion, regardless of the cost to market users.
• The UK will maintain the EU rulebook for a
considerable period of time post-Brexit, as UK
politicians were fully behind most large pieces
of regulation that have been implemented over
the past decade, including MiFID II and EMIR.
Both regulations have been onshored in the UK
in full, meaning that in theory, firms should see
little change in this area.
• The UK will leave the EU, but Swinburne
remains positive that there will be a negotiated
and orderly departure, regardless of the political
outcome. Market participants are best placed
to ‘weather the Brexit storm’ as many opera-
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INVESTOPS DAILY
tors are global in nature. Firms will find a way
to provide suitable access to markets on behalf
of clients. The UK and the EU will remain open
for business moving forward, but those regions
placing unnecessary measures to complicate
this will not thrive in the long-term.
Future of Work: Institutionalising LEAN
transformation and an agile culture in your
organisation to achieve operational excellence
• The future is in disrupting your business mod-
els and thinking in a new way. They have to be
fast, nimble and adaptive in the future. Allow
employees to innovate, to succeed in creating
value and be rewarded accordingly.
• Asset managers tend to not hire too many op-
erations specialists these days, they look more
for generalists who can lend their hand well to
taking a process and condensing it down.
• One day we will be able to move from one side
of the world to another in a matter of seconds
through augmented and virtual reality. Offices
as we know them today will cease today as
more and more people begin to work remotely.
• Introduction of humanoid robots – the fusion
of man and machine. Over a period of time you
will see a mix in our workforce as these robots
make up part of the workforce of the future.
• In the future there will be a rise of ‘the un-
bankables’ as innovation will happen with these
individuals because innovation happens at this
end of the market and moves up, disrupting the
entire industry.
• Companies will have to work out how to con-
nect with a new generation that is so familiar
with technology.
• There will be a rise of Smart Governments
using blockchain, artificial intelligence and new
technologies. Organisations will have to learn
how to tap into these smart governments in
the future in order to innovate.
• Alternative data forms arising – such as mon-
itoring facial expressions or time taken to fill in
a form when deciding whether they are likely
to default on a loan. It’s important people are
using data to make decisions.
• Every business should hire a chief ethics
officer – something essential to survive in the
future.