Alan Picone (KPMG Luxembourg) and Hervé Ballone (ALCO): From Soloists to Orchestra

Alan Picone, Partner and Asset Management Market Leader at KPMG Luxembourg, answers three questions from Hervé Ballone, Co-Chairman of ALCO, on silos, compliance and seamless investing.

The biggest trend is not A.I., it is convergence and the abolition of silos.

What is the biggest trend currently in the fund industry?

The biggest trend is not AI, it is convergence and the abolition of silos. Historically, every participant in the value chain operated in their own lane: asset managers, distributors, transfer agents and compliance functions. The fund industry is a bunch of excellent soloists mastering their art, but the sum of the parts does not make the symphony. We are now witnessing a fundamental shift towards creating the orchestra. Investors want a seamless experience and don't want to see the silos. The industry's response is clear: rethink the operating model across the market. Asset managers and asset servicers are redesigning the organisation for scale, efficiency and connectivity. AI, technology and digitalisation play a critical role as the building blocks and enablers of this deeper transformation. It is all about interconnectivity and expansion of distribution channels.

What are the main compliance priorities in the fund industry?

Compliance, one of the most transformative functions across fund managers, has moved from the back office to the boardroom and helps firms make the right decisions tomorrow. The first priority is to embed compliance into strategy from day one, whether entering a new market, launching a product, responding to a regulatory development or adopting new technology. The second priority is digitalisation. Compliance teams are moving away from periodic manual controls towards continuous, data-driven monitoring. The senior compliance function remains paramount for decision-making and analysis, with a certain digitalisation of the fieldwork. The future of compliance is not about identifying issues after the event through ex post controls, but about preventing them before they occur through robust ex ante risk assessment and continuous digital monitoring.

What will be the biggest impact on the fund industry over the next few years?

The next revolution I see is seamless investing. Put simply, it means making funds as easy to buy as books. First, the industry needs to address the fragmentation that still exists across the value chain. Take investor onboarding: today, investors repeatedly complete AML and KYC processes across multiple institutions. How sustainable is that in the long run? Digital identity, automation and distributed ledger technologies can turn those fragmented processes into a seamless experience. Over time, onboarding, reporting and even fund transactions could become almost instantaneous. Most importantly, this will make investment products accessible to a much wider audience and unlock the vast pool of savings that remains underinvested. Success will come when investors no longer see the infrastructure behind investing, just as with online shopping. They simply invest.