Should Client Reporting Be On-Demand like Netflix?

The core of any client reporting challenge is inevitably a data problem, and the ultimate solution may be highly personalized self-service capabilities much like a media streaming service, says Andrew Barnett, chief product officer at Hub, a new provider for the global securities operations industry. Barnett is the focus of this edition of the FTF Exchange podcast. When asked about a new ecosystem for client reporting, Barnett focused on the new operating models that go beyond sending out PDFs, emails, and spreadsheets about a firm’s performance to clients. Firms will need to evolve their solutions and the services and change the historic dynamic of one-way communication for client reporting. This will mean push-and-pull engagement patterns, Barnett says. “What we’re now hearing is that people want to activate and call that data directly. They don’t want it pixel-perfect at any point in time because they’ve got broader usabilities. You have to expose that data via an API allow or other methods,” he says. “Client reporting — it is a data problem. So, certainly, the solution has to be data-driven and that data has to be discoverable, you have to be able to interact with them, and it has to be actionable,” Barnett says. “We have to allow end-users to interact with that data to generate the insights. It’s not on Hub or other providers in that space to be able to generate that insight because that is on the investment manager — that’s their IP, the USP [unique selling point] that they need to work with,” he adds. Among the reporting needs of clients is a desire for more personalized offerings. “We can kind of really see the fact that now customers are expecting that hyper personalization and shouldn’t be constrained by time or by a really heavy, kind of manual and technical engagement to get it done. It should be via no-code, low-code types of capabilities,” Barnett says. “A key part of reporting is communication and a key part of communication is collaboration,” Barnett says. It will be essential to have “those talks embedded inside of the data, the reporting solutions, and really importantly a really well-defined kind of business glossary … So that when they look at a report they can self-service to ensure they understand … It is also almost taking that Netflix world that we live in now and making it available in the institutional client reporting space.” In the podcast, Barnett also covers:  The top post-trade challenges in 2024;  The T+1 push and ultimately T+0;  The future for Books of Records;  The Ops advantages of Cloud-Native computing;  A.I. and Ops; and  Open Source software for financial services firms. Hub is a cloud-native platform provider that offers connectivity between trading and relevant data to optimize the operations technology used by investment firms. By doing so, Hub says that it enables data streaming, artificial intelligence-based technologies, and automation. Hub is a is a sponsor of FTF’s Performance Measurement & Client Reporting event taking place on Feb. 29, 2024, at Etc. Venues, 601 Lexington Ave. in New York City.