Four Transformations; One Unchanged Verdict
Nik Perros
During my tenure in fund administration, I have read articles about, and been asked to participate in, technology initiatives that would transform how we work, drive efficiencies in our operations, improve our performance and reimagine our approach to relationship management.
Big data, robotics, the blockchain and now, artificial intelligence. Each arrived with the same accompanying fanfare and the promise that our company would utilize this latest innovation to reshape the industry.
I read the articles. I participated in the initiatives. There were many good ideas. But there is a question the genre never asks of itself. Where does the transformation show up?
Global Custodian is better placed than most to answer that, having asked administrators’ clients what they think for more than three decades. That archive is the closest thing this industry has to an objective record of its own performance. Our research shows us that the satisfaction meter in respect of the industry’s tech innovation initiatives is a resounding meh.
The gap between what the industry announces and what its clients report is not a communications problem. It is a structural one. Most of private capital administration still runs on core platforms that are more than thirty years old, asked to manage and transform data sets that were never contemplated when they were built. Rather than address the reality of aging platforms, the industry has cobbled together a mountain of technical debt on top of them, in its attempt to keep up with client demand.
The results are manifest in a variety of outcomes, including: (i) the same field means one thing in the accounting system and something slightly different in the reporting layer; (ii) reconciliation is not a step in the process, it is the process; and (iii) manual intervention is the backbone of “industry leading” technology platforms.
Placing artificial intelligence on top of that environment and expecting a different result than every preceding technology innovation has produced, is to mistake a tool for a panacea. Realizing the promise of any technological innovation requires certain baseline conditions to be true before any of this is worth discussing; things like strategic planning, a viable technology roadmap, data consistency, and data governance and ownership.
Argo started from a clean sheet. We chose our platform rather than inheriting one. We built data governance around it. We’ve been obsessed with data consistency from day one. We work with our technology partner, using 21st century tools, to define a practical roadmap and drive toward real and positive outcomes for our business and our clients.
Industry announcements promising change deserve more scrutiny than they get. The firms with the most to say about artificial intelligence are often the ones carrying the most technical debt, and those two facts are rarely printed next to each other.
For anyone assessing an administrator this year, don’t ask what they are doing with AI. Everyone has a heap of articles at the ready for that one. Ask what their data model looks like, who owns data governance, how old their platform is and how their technology initiatives have changed their clients’ experience in respect of service levels, ownership and accountability.
That last question already has three decades of answers.
This article was first published in Global Custodian on 1 September 2026. The original is available to Global Custodian subscribers through this link.
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