The quality of service providers’ partners impacts AWM firms’ ability to create value

In our recent study, HFS Horizons: The Best Service Providers for Asset and Wealth Management, 2024, we assessed the capabilities of 22 IT and business process services firms in terms of how they’re supporting the evolving needs of asset and wealth management (AWM) firms. The 2024 agenda for AWM firms is end-to-end enterprise modernization. Service providers have a critical enablement role as purveyors of key tech and industry domain capabilities—curating their skills and orchestrating a partner ecosystem. The quality and composition of providers’ ecosystem partners inform their ability to deliver value.

So, who are the top ecosystem partners for AWM? We asked the 22 service providers assessed in our study to specify their top partners. These firms rose to the top as most frequently identified to support AWM clients.

• Hyperscalers were strongly rated, with Microsoft Azure (55%) leading the pack. They offer critical storage and computing capabilities with some evolving industry-specific capabilities.
• Industry-skinned for AWM, many general-purpose enterprise software tools offer solutions tailored to the needs of asset and wealth managers. Salesforce Financial Services Cloud led the pack (50%); Pega and Adobe were also named.
• Enterprise partners, such as SAP (27%) and Snowflake (23%), offer key horizontal capabilities generally applicable across industries.
• Industry-specific partners are those designed specifically for AWM business needs. The top partners include

• • Temenos (27%) led the wealth side of the equation with its end-to-end wealth management solutions.
  • Murex (27%) was top-rated for its investment management software for asset managers.
  • Avaloq (23%) offers an end-to-end wealth management platform.
  • SimCorp (23%) offers multi-asset investment management solutions.
  • FIS (23%) offers asset and wealth management and investment banking solutions.

While the data for any individual partner reflects relative demand, the larger point is the mix of partners. Service providers are meeting the myriad modernization needs of AWM firms by curating an array of ecosystem partners. The hyperscalers enable critical infrastructure for application and data modernization, thus allowing for rehosting, replatforming, and refactoring. Industry-skinned and industry-specific partners foster modernization through upgrades or evolution to SaaS. Enterprise partners such as Snowflake enable data modernization. The pieces fit together to deliver on broader enterprise modernization.

The Bottom Line: Selecting a service provider with a strong and diverse partner ecosystem has become essential for asset and wealth management enterprises to gain the required and relevant technical ability and meet the evolving customer needs of advanced digital solutions.