We're not quite sure if AI will really be a risk to humanity. But it is certainly putting expectations of timelines for quarterly and monthly reporting at risk.
Fund managers are increasingly going to ask a very simple question:
“If the data already exists, why can’t my report be ready in minutes?”
And, increasingly, that expectation is not unreasonable. AI can dramatically compress the time required to draft commentary, analyse portfolio data, reconcile information, generate investor communications and assemble reporting packs.
But there is an important catch
Producing a report quickly is relatively easy. Producing it consistently, deterministically and with a complete audit trail is much harder. Ensuring every single allocation is done correctly, incorporating dynamic rules, excused investors and at times multi-vehicle and multi-currency computations, is harder still.
And every number ultimately needs to be traceable back to the underlying transaction, methodology and source data.