Some asset managers who made sizable investments in automated prospectus solutions have been disappointed by the results so far. In many cases, however, the problems don’t originate in any flaws in the automation systems themselves. Rather, performance is being undermined by shortcomings in managers’ legacy technology platforms that make collecting and uploading data into these solutions a chore.
Asset management legal and product teams are coming under unprecedented pressure. A spate of regulatory changes has dramatically increased the pace and volume of the production of prospectuses and other regulatory documents. Legal and product teams are tasked with navigating SEC modernization rules, liquidity updates, money market reform, Tailored Shareholder Reports, and the launch of EDGAR Next—just to name a few recent challenges. More generally, asset managers face shortened filing windows, expectations for faster updates and rising scrutiny on data accuracy and auditability. With all these changes taking effect at once, asset management boards and chief compliance officers are raising internal expectations for transparency and consistency.
As these pressures intensify, automated prospectus solutions are emerging as a critical capability for asset managers. In the first half of 2025, Aliter Investment Services, LLC, an F2 Strategy company, surveyed 17 leading asset management firms and third-party administrators about their process for producing prospectuses and other regulatory documents. Almost every firm surveyed said they consider their automated prospectus essential to their organizations.
These solutions have become so important that respondents rarely mentioned cost pressures as a meaningful consideration. Faced with new regulations, increased production demands, an accelerating schedule, and enhanced compliance scrutiny, asset managers seem to have come to the conclusion that implementing an efficient and reliable process for producing prospectuses and other documents is a business imperative, well worth even a significant cost.
The Real Problem: Broken Data Pipelines
Asset managers who have invested in automated prospectus solutions are generally happy with their purchases. Managers in the survey give high marks to their current solutions, expressing high levels of satisfaction across a range of categories such as template management, accuracy, controls and audit trails.
Despite these impressive satisfaction scores, many managers say their prospectus automation solutions are failing to deliver expected results in terms of accelerating processes and lowering costs and risk. Most of these managers say this underperformance stems from problems that arise before the automated production platforms even kick in. Breakdowns in the process of uploading data into the systems are causing delays and requiring manual interventions that undercut promised efficiency gains. Approximately 70% of survey participants reported troubles in data ingestion. These challenges were not due to shortcomings in the platforms; instead, they originated upstream.
Managers say existing processes for collecting, normalizing and uploading data into automated prospectus solutions have two core weaknesses: a lack of automation in internal data processes, and the need for manual entry of data into the system itself.
These weaknesses create real problems for product teams. Data arrives late or inconsistently. Data requires manual reformatting prior to uploading. Siloed internal teams and systems make it difficult to assemble normalized data in a timely manner. Managers say breakdowns often occur when product teams are stitching together financial, legal, and product data from different systems. Compounding these headaches is the fact that the entire process of collecting and managing data that feeds automated prospectus solutions is “spread-sheet heavy,” an approach that opens the door to data inconsistency, error and delay.
Together these issues create the need for manual effort and duplicative work, which frustrates staff, delays the production cycle and creates operational risk for the organization.
Solving the Problem: Enhanced Front-End Data and Workflow Tools
The vast majority of managers participating in the study agree that once data is assembled and standardized, automation platforms are highly effective. These results suggest that for most asset managers, addressing stubborn inefficiencies in the prospectus production process won’t require a change in vendor or automation solutions. Instead, managers need better front-end data management and workflow tools.
Asset managers should ask vendors what data and workflow tools they offer. This question is especially important for asset managers considering the purchase of their first or a new automation solution. Managers who have already implemented a solution should partner with their vendors to build or otherwise integrate tools to streamline and automate data collection and uploading.
To be effective, these tools should include some combination of the following elements:
- Data ingestion frameworks
- Real-time validation layers
- API-driven data pipelines
- Data normalization engines
- Workflow orchestration tools that route data and documents to the right reviewers at the right time, with clear ownership, SLAs, and audit trails
- Content visibility dashboards that allow legal and product teams to see where specific language, tables, and components are used across funds, documents, and share classes—so that a single change can be propagated consistently and safely across the entire document family.
When discussing system enhancements with vendors, asset managers should be sure to ask about artificial intelligence. AI has the potential to radically increase efficiency and lower costs in the prospectus production process. Asset managers believe AI can accelerate and improve data review and shorten time to market by creating document drafts based on existing language, accelerating product launches. Managers should ask their vendors about currently available or potential applications in each of these areas, while also quizzing providers about guardrails that ensure appropriate human review and oversight, and measures the vendor is taking to help mitigate other potential risks associated with the use of AI.
The iXBRL Challenge
As managers question vendors about their capabilities in data management and artificial intelligence, they should be sure to ask about another key issue in regulatory document management: iXBRL tagging.
Managers participating in the study agree that iXBRLtagging represents a persistent pain point for their organizations. In fact, iXBRL tagging is seen as so difficult that many firms choose not to self-file. Tagging complexity often forces managers to rely on external specialists.
Regardless of who does the work, iXBRL tagging can be a source of disruption and delay. During the tagging process, the manager’s entire system sometimes needs to be “locked,” limiting what legal and product teams can do critical points in the cycle.
Given the magnitude of these challenges, asset managers should ensure that their platform vendors understand the firm’s production environment and come to the table with deep iXBRL subject-matter expertise. In a best-case scenario, the vendor’s solution seamlessly integrates content systems and filing workflows, making tagging a natural part of production rather than a disruptive end-step. That level of integration will support simultaneous tagging and editing, allowing legal, product, and disclosure teams to keep working while tags are applied. Finally, experienced vendors can share expertise to help asset managers strengthen tagging governance, clarifying who owns tagging, who reviews it, and how issues are escalated.
A Technology Tipping Point
I believe the asset management industry is on the brink of a technological revolution that will eliminate or at least drastically reduce many of the operational challenges, costs and risks associated with regulatory document management. Many of the innovative solutions needed to achieve that goal already exist. The only thing holding the industry back now is outdated legacy infrastructure that prevents many asset managers from quickly and easily assembling the data needed to power these next-gen solutions.
Fortunately, technology providers have been hard at work on this problem and are now offering integrated platforms that not only include tools that help managers collect, standardize and ingest the data needed but also integrate ixbrl, filing and distribution of the prospectus documents.
