FundForum gathered the asset management industry in Monaco this June at a moment of genuine transition. Markets are performing, but cost and margin pressures are intensifying. Global conflict has redrawn the investment landscape, posing the question whether Energy, Security and Geopolitics is the new ESG framing against which allocation decisions are being made. AI development continues at blistering pace, actively changing how the industry invests, operates and competes. Finally, the SpaceX IPO crystallised a question the industry has been circling for some time. With such value being created before a firm ever reaches the public markets, how does the industry build the access, operational structures and client relationships to ensure those opportunities are fair, open and safe?
Here is what stood out to me.
The distribution landscape is being redrawn
Across multiple stages, one conclusion was consistent: generic distribution strategies are no longer viable.
In a city steeped in motor racing history, my colleague Liam Martin opened the Distribution Stage with a parallel to Formula One. The firms that will win in distribution, he argued, need a fast car - but what separates the leaders from the rest is better telemetry.
Drawing on Broadridge's proprietary data and AI-powered forecasting models, Liam outlined a market expected to grow to almost $160 trillion in global AUM over the next three years, principally led by Asia with projected annual growth of 10.7%.
While fee compression will continue, the pace is expected to moderate as investors increase allocations to higher-margin private markets and alternative assets.
But the headline numbers are only the starting point. Beneath them sits market-, channel- and vehicle-level intelligence that enables firms to identify precisely where growth is accelerating, where margins remain attractive, and where competitive intensity is increasing. As management teams face more difficult choices about where to invest, which products to prioritise and how to reach clients, the ability to make deliberate product, vehicle and distribution decisions becomes an increasingly important competitive advantage.
Perhaps the clearest structural trend underpinning those decisions is the growing influence of the individual investor. While retail investors represent a smaller share of assets today than institutions, they are expected to account for a disproportionately large share of future net flows. For asset managers, success will increasingly depend not only on identifying where growth exists, but on building the distribution capabilities and client engagement strategies needed to capture it.
AI: honest about where we are
The AI debate has moved on materially over the last 12 months, from theory to practice. While investing remains a fiduciary industry where individual judgment is critical, AI is stepping in to inform and streamline that process in numerous ways. One leader put this simply: while investing will always need a human at the wheel, AI can improve the car.
Our own experience at Broadridge illustrates what that looks like in practice. Take one example, that my colleague Daniel Jarman shared as part of an AI showcase - proxy voting. Asset Managers face a genuine problem of scale within proxy voting - around 70% of shareholder meetings fall within three months of the year, creating a volume challenge that human-led processes struggle to absorb. There has been little or no innovation in this space for years, leaving firms vulnerable to processing on incorrect data or voting on policies that do not reflect their true intentions. Our AI solution addresses this, delivering repeatable judgment with auditability built in, while maintaining human oversight over 100% of outputs. It is already saving time, and the potential to go further is significant. But the broader point matters more than the specific case: in a fiduciary industry, the firms that will lead in AI are not those that move fastest, but those that build responsibly and put trust into the process from the start.
Private credit: past the headlines, into operations
Private credit sessions had a specific task: address the headlines and move the conversation forward. The issues in private credit have been well documented - a small number of high-profile defaults, concerns about valuation transparency, liquidity mismatches in semi-liquid structures, and questions about retail suitability and mis-selling. The industry’s position was clear – we are in an earnings cycle and not a credit cycle, problems reflect individual deals rather than systemic weakness, and private credit remains an essential part of the global economy.
With that ground cleared, the conversation moved to scale. Appetite within the wealth channel remains strong. PwC's 2026 Global Private Credit Survey found that more than 80% of credit portfolio managers expect to receive increased allocations over the next 12 months. However, serving that demand requires products and infrastructure that is still being built. Liquidity management, valuation transparency and operational demands of semi-liquid structures are seen as consistent pressure points.
Opening up private credit, and private markets more broadly, requires both operational investment and investor education, and most of the industry is still early on both counts.
Tokenisation: from question to implementation
Twelve months ago, the conversation around tokenisation centred on when. At FundForum 2026, that question had shifted to how. With major asset managers including BlackRock and Amundi launching tokenised money market funds, the industry is moving from pilots to production. Regulatory frameworks are beginning to catch up – MiCA (Markets in Crypto Assets), the GENIUS (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins) Act and the forthcoming Clarity Act are all steps in the right direction - though speakers at FundForum were clear that greater harmonisation across jurisdictions remains a critical challenge.
The direction of travel is evident in our own 2026 Digital Transformation & Next-Gen Technology Study, which found that 67% of asset management firms are already making significant investments in blockchain and distributed ledger technology. Looking ahead, firms expect core asset classes to be fully tokenised within three to five years - with equities, mutual funds and ETFs, and money markets among the first to scale.
The focus now, according to industry experts, is operational efficiency. Tokenisation will re-plumb middle and back-office infrastructure in ways that reduce cost and friction across the investment chain – in practice, that means faster settlement, intraday collateral management and 24/7 fund subscriptions and redemptions, particularly in bond markets and private markets. The firms that will benefit most are those that start that journey now, with clarity about where the tangible gains lie.
The bottom line
FundForum 2026 made clear that the distance between knowing and doing is where competitive advantage is being built. The opportunities in distribution, private markets and technology are real, but operational and data-dependent. The winners will be those combining market intelligence, workflow automation and operational infrastructure - not those pursuing isolated initiatives. In a city that understands marginal gains better than most, the message was apt - better telemetry wins the race.
