Asset servicing activity grew by more than 25 per cent year-on-year in 2025, but the surge in event volumes is exposing operational limitations in a sector still reliant on fragmented systems and manual workarounds, according to White paper “Broadening Asset Servicing Today” by The ValueExchange in partnership with the International Securities Services Association (ISSA) and Broadridge.
The survey of over 270 market participants highlights data quality as the dominant source of operational risk, with up to 67 per cent of servicing errors attributed to poor or inconsistent data. Legacy technology and multiple disparate platforms continue to hinder automation efforts, even as processing complexity rises across income, voluntary corporate actions, proxy, tax and class actions.
Nearly 60 per cent of servicing resources are consumed by income and voluntary corporate actions, placing significant stress on operations. At the same time, more than 60 per cent of brokers reported declining automation levels, exacerbating error rates and cost pressures.
Outsourcing and technology partial remedies
Firms are increasingly turning to outsourcing for functions such as tax reporting, event capture, tax reclaims, proxy voting and class actions where service providers report lower error rates and reduced costs relative to in-house processing.
The research also finds that 57 per cent of industry leaders view technology providers as critical enablers of consistent “golden source” data, a precursor to scalable automation. Investments in process redesign and upstream data capture are among the most-cited measures to improve efficiency.
Investment priorities shift
Client expectations remain the leading driver of investment in asset servicing improvements (38%), followed by error reduction (33%) and regulatory compliance (9%). While some firms expect to reduce costs over the next five years, most respondents prioritise technology spending aimed at enhancing operational effectiveness and profitability.
