Turning Regulatory Compliance into a Strategic Advantage

Today’s regulatory landscape is evolving at unmatched speed. As firms expand across asset classes, regulatory reporting can no longer be treated as a back office obligation. Instead, it has become a catalyst for operational efficiency, investor transparency, and competitive differentiation.

In a recent webinar, Reimagining Regulatory Reporting: A Catalyst for Operational Efficiency and Strategic Advantage, experts from Apex Group and Numerix explored how firms can rethink reporting frameworks to better meet client expectations, support modern portfolios, and future-proof their operations. Below is a rundown of the core themes and insights born from that discussion.

Transparency Expectations Are Rising—Across Every Investor Segment

Transparency has long been a checkbox item for investors. Today, it’s a prerequisite for trust. According to panelist Peter Boden, SVP, Investment Advisory, Apex Group, transparency now carries the same weight as performance itself. Investors want full visibility into strategies, holdings, risk exposures, liquidity, and costs.

Marc Russell-Jones, Head of Institutional Sales, Apex Group, emphasized that while timeliness and accuracy remain universal requirements, transparency expectations differ slightly across investor groups. Family offices, for example, often require higher customization and look-through detail across portfolios spanning liquid and illiquid assets. Institutional investors, by contrast, increasingly expect sophisticated analytics and dashboards that enable deeper interrogation of performance and risk.

The trend is clear: transparency expectations are converging upward, and firms must be prepared to deliver more detailed, more frequent, and more customizable insights than ever before.

Data Quality and Lineage Remain Top Challenges

As portfolios now blend public markets, private markets, and tokenized assets, data integration challenges are escalating. Panelists identified a few persistent issues:

• Data consistency across systems and teams
  Siloed teams, disconnected systems, and differing internal taxonomies frequently undermine data reliability.
• Limited transparency in alternatives
  Illiquid assets continue to suffer from inconsistent data availability, outdated valuations, and incomplete reporting from custodians.
• Operational readiness for tokenization
  As tokenized funds and share classes gain traction, firms must adapt their operating models to support 24/7 asset servicing, pricing, and data capture.

Apex’s acquisition of Tokeny, and the resulting ability to support fully tokenized funds, highlights how service providers are adapting to help clients navigate these complexities.

Chiara Bird, Head of Client Success, Apex Risk Technologies, noted that solving the data challenge requires not only robust technology but also an organizational culture change. Firms must embrace enterprise-level data models to ensure consistency across all reporting and analytics workflows.

Which Analytics Matter Most Today?

While performance reporting remains the core requirement, investors increasingly demand deeper, more nuanced analytics including: 

• Risk and liquidity metrics, which are now central, especially for managers with exposure to alternatives.
• Attribution and contribution analysis help both managers and allocators understand where value is truly being generated.
• ESG and ethical investing insights continue to rise in importance, particularly for institutional investors, charities, and faith-based funds.

The panel highlighted a growing expectation not just for raw numbers, but for context that helps investors understand why performance differs from benchmarks and how managers are managing risk under different market environments.

What it Takes to Build a Modern Multi-Asset Reporting Framework

In the webinar, Apex panelists disclosed that when designing or upgrading reporting frameworks, firms must focus on four foundational principles:

1. Accessibility of Data

Firms must start with the end-user in mind. Will the data feed dashboards, be queried by AI, populate regulatory filings, or support investor presentations? The infrastructure must be flexible enough to support all these use cases.

2. Accuracy and a Single Source of Truth

A golden source data model ensures that every system, report, and user draws from the same underlying dataset. This minimizes reconciliation issues and improves auditability.

3. Flexibility in Taxonomy

Different clients and regulatory regimes may classify assets differently. Systems must allow customization without corrupting underlying data integrity.

4. Built-in Quality Assurance

Automated checks, independent valuation, and audit logs are essential to preserving accuracy, especially as reporting cycles accelerate.

Modern Data & Reporting Tools are Boosting Investor Confidence

Technology is no longer just an operational enabler—it has become a true competitive differentiator. This point came through clearly in the discussion, particularly as Chiara Bird shared examples of managers who used accurate, granular analytics to communicate their performance story more effectively and ultimately support capital raising efforts. When data is clear and credible, investor confidence rises.

Centralizing data and reporting also plays a major role. For ManCos and ACDs that manage large volumes of regulatory filings, a consolidated data infrastructure significantly reduces error rates and streamlines oversight.

Across the industry, firms adopting modern data and reporting tools are seeing meaningful gains, including greater efficiency, faster turnaround times, and a measurable increase in investor trust.

Meeting Diverse Stakeholder Needs through Tailored Reporting

One of the key insights from our webinar panel is that no two stakeholders consume information in the same exact way.

Retail-oriented products require clear visuals and simplified narratives. Institutions require deep analytics, risk measures, and drill-down capability. Clients in segregated mandate markets demand high customization and flexible delivery formats.

A modern reporting ecosystem must support all of these use cases—without burdening firms with bespoke, manually produced outputs.

The Future of Regulatory Reporting: Digital, Dynamic, and More Complex

Regulators are increasingly focused on digitization, data granularity, and accessibility. The panel expects several developments over the next few years:

• Digitization of reports, moving beyond PDFs to interactive, web-based formats
• Greater regulatory attention on tokenized assets, particularly around valuation, liquidity, and investor disclosure
• More prescriptive frameworks, similar to UCITS, emerging for tokenized and alternative structures
• Increased pressure for daily, near real-time data consistency across the organization

The overarching expectation is that regulatory reporting will continue expanding in scope, frequency, and complexity. Firms that modernize their reporting infrastructure today will be best positioned to navigate tomorrow’s regulatory landscape—and capitalize on opportunities along the way.

Watch the full on-demand webinar recording for deeper insights on this topic: Reimagining Regulatory Reporting: A Catalyst for Operational Efficiency and Strategic Advantage