The financial industry is navigating a period of significant change. Regulatory requirements are becoming more complex, driven by settlement cycle changes, tighter data governance frameworks and expanding ESG obligations. At the same time, AI adoption is accelerating and data volumes are growing faster than many companies can manage. These demands are increasingly difficult to absorb in-house, particularly for small specialist and mid-sized players.
For many asset and wealth managers, the challenge isn’t a lack of ambition, it’s a lack of infrastructure. In an environment where complexity is accelerating, the firms that keep pace are those with the right technology foundations in place.
Building that kind of infrastructure is no small undertaking. It requires hundreds of technology specialists, teams dedicated to managing market data across multiple providers, and global dealing capabilities scaled to handle millions of orders every year. Layer in the need for ongoing R&D, particularly as generative AI moves from an experiment to an operational tool, and it becomes clear why world-class investment infrastructure has become one of the most resource-intensive challenges in the industry.
Managing the data challenge
For most financial institutions, data sits at the heart of everything - and yet it remains one of the most persistent sources of operational friction. Fragmented across systems and vendors, it slows reporting and risk calculations while costs accumulate across multiple providers. And even when the data exists, turning it into meaningful insight quickly enough to act on it is rarely straightforward.
Managing data is costly, but the cost of poor data quality and inefficiency is often far higher, particularly when it leads to productivity loss. Addressing this is therefore essential and it requires two things working together.
First, a centralised, institutional-grade infrastructure that sources, standardises and distributes data across securities, benchmarks, ESG and back-office functions.
Second, for data to be usable, it needs an environment that enables analysis, modelling and action through AI tools, developer workspaces and connected business intelligence capabilities.
Rethinking operational complexity
Execution is another area under pressure. Trading desk costs continue to rise, while regulatory obligations around best execution, T+1 settlement and EMIR 3.0 continue to expand. For many asset managers, this complexity pulls the focus away from investment performance and client service without adding strategic value in return.
Amundi Technology: end-to-end capabilities at scale
Amundi Technology, the technology arm of Amundi, Europe’s leading asset manager combines cutting-edge platforms with operational expertise and managed services. Clients can implement solutions independently, opt for fully managed services, or select specific capabilities to complement their in-house teams.
What sets Amundi Technology apart is the institutional infrastructure behind it. The organisation is made up of 1,250 IT professionals, 150 data specialists managing 160+ market data providers, and a dealing desk executing more than 3 million orders annually - alongside a dedicated R&D function developing generative AI tools already in use across Amundi.
Amundi Technology has built capabilities across the full investment value chain:
- ALTO Investment: a global end-to-end investment management platform that helps firms manage the full investment value chain, from portfolio management and risk to data, compliance, and operations.
- ALTO Wealth & Distribution: designed to cover the full wealth management value chain, from personalised portfolio construction and order management to analytics, reporting and digital journeys for asset and wealth managers.
- ALTO Employee Savings and Retirement: a scalable front-to-back platform for banking and insurance groups enabling them to manage savings and retirement schemes in one place.
- ALTO Asset Servicing: a flexible, end-to-end platform that helps asset servicers manage investment compliance, portfolio analysis, reporting, and regulatory oversight across all asset classes.
In addition to these services, Amundi has developed three new solutions addressing the operational challenges outlined in this article. These include:
- Data-as-a-Service: outsourced data management giving clients access to clean, governed data and actionable insights at a lower cost, it already supports 35+ clients across 160+ data providers.
- ALTO AI Studio: a sovereign workspace where teams can unify data, run analytics and build AI agents on real investment data, with the governance and control their organisation requires.
- Execution Services: outsourced dealing that is designed to help clients improve execution quality, manage costs and maintain full trade transparency, broker relationships, and counterparty contracts. It is supported by Europe’s largest buy-side dealing desk, with 60+ traders operating 24/7 across Singapore, Paris, and Dublin.
Together, these solutions share one purpose: helping financial institutions spend less time on operational complexity and more on what creates value for clients - whether that means rationalising data costs, unlocking AI capabilities or outsourcing execution entirely.
Over the next three years, our roadmap is clear: launch new capabilities, deepen our wealth technology offering, and leverage the full strength of the Amundi Group.
The goal is to be the partner that financial institutions turn to when they want to spend less time on operationally complex activities and focus more on their core differentiators, where they can create real value for their clients.
