By FINTECH Books Contributor, Christophe de la Celle Follow: @Hedgeguard Although scarce in today’s globalised economy, monopolies have existed throughout time and have helped forged what is today’s industrial landscape. So when one considers an industry where 10% of the market participants control 90% of its assets, you would be excused for thinking of the U.S Steels and Standard Oils of the Carnegie and Rockefeller eras. Surprisingly this is the state of today’s asset management industry where a handful of bigger players manage 90% of total AUM. This can be explained by the numerous headwinds encountered by wealth managers, hedge funds, and family offices to get their businesses off the ground and then successfully scale up their operations. The Financial Crisis in 2008 and industry scandals such as the Maddoff affair have only contributed to piling additional regulatory pressure, operational burden and associated costs on investment managers. If you add to this a context of investor driven pressures on fees, which investment manager in their right mind would invest their time and effort building up a successful investment management business? Thankfully for investment managers and investors alike, the overall picture is not as bleak as the above depiction could lead us to believe. Key technological advances on the operational front have empowered both investors and managers equally, notably allowing an increasing number of wealth managers to access the industry. At the heart of this progress has been the digitalisation of the asset management’s operational requirements. Remember when 4-5 years all the talk within the industry was about the cloud and how it was going to revolutionise the way counterparts work with each other? Well, the cloud is now fully in production and has allowed for a closer alignment of operational teams with the investment manager and hence with end investors. If you would like to learn more about FinTech please look at our video courses at FINTECHCircleInstitute.com