With the global industry continuing to tighten its belt, data efficiency has emerged as a top operational concern among EMEA’s investment managers, new research by Bonaire Software Solutions reveals.

Having polled attendees at its annual EMEA User Conference in London, Bonaire found that 67 per cent of investment managers see data consistency across business units as one of their biggest challenges with expense management.

Another big concern is the accuracy of payments: 57 per cent of respondents admitted that they are not confident that they are paying out the right distributor rebates – a situation which is perhaps unsurprising considering the sheer amount of vendor data which flows in and out of investment firms across their various units. Overpayment of vendor fees is therefore a real risk, Bonaire warns, having also found that for 60 per cent of respondents reconciliation is their biggest concern in distributor rebate invoicing.

Other major challenges the respondents highlighted were consolidating data from various systems (cited by 42 per cent of respondents) and consolidating holistic data from all business units for cross-business reporting (46 per cent).