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The asset management industry has grown fat on a quarter-century of exceptionally loose central bank monetary policies. Ever-rising asset values have allowed managers to largely ignore shrinking fees, rising costs, failed outsourcing and offshoring arrangements and a long-term secular trend from high margin active investment strategies to low-margin passive alternatives. But now a combination of rising interest rates, the reversal of quantitative easing and geopolitical and market uncertainties have exposed a fragile business model, putting profitability on a downward trajectory. The threat has woken asset managers to the need for radical change. Vendors that once found it hard to interest the industry in new ways of generating revenue and cutting costs are getting more than a hearing – they are taking on clients. One of the newcomers is FundGuard, a Cloud-based software as a service platform for investment management and administration whose initial mission is to transform an area that once seemed immune to technological change: fund accounting. Dominic Hobson, co-founder of the Future of Finance, spoke to FundGuard president John Lehner.
