Global Asset Managers Plan Significant AI Budget Increases

A majority of surveyed global asset management firms plan to raise their artificial intelligence budgets by at least 50 per cent within the next year as the technology transforms the finance industry, a recent study showed.

The study, released Tuesday by US fintech firm Clearwater Analytics, indicated the adoption of AI will have a major impact on labour-intensive operations. Of the fund managers polled, 62 per cent said they expected transformative change in data generation and summarisation.

According to those surveyed, 58 per cent also said the technology would have a major effect on decision-support systems, including portfolio rebalancing, while 57 per cent cited predictive modelling and stress-testing.

“What’s striking is that AI adoption is forcing fund managers to confront the fundamentals of data management in a way nothing else has,” said Souvik Das, chief technology officer at Clearwater Analytics.

The study, titled “GenAI and the Data Divide,” drew on responses from 178 senior executives across hedge funds, private credit, and institutional asset managers located in Europe, the US and Asia.

Beyond these day-to-day advances, AI is rapidly taking on more complex and historically challenging operational tasks.

Two-thirds of fund managers reported that their AI tools effectively managed alternative data – an area traditionally difficult to scale – while 62 per cent reported success with multi-agent orchestration that triggered autonomous operations based on specific data thresholds.