Over 80 per cent of fund administration leaders are concerned that multiple manual processes impede their ability to control errors in reporting and documentation to investors and regulators, according to a new survey.

In addition, 80 per cent believe that data consolidation is an important issue.

The survey is conducted by Confluence, a leading provider of automated data management solutions, today released the findings of a survey of 115 "C-level" executives and other management professionals at these companies.

The survey shows that nearly 77 percent are also concerned that manual data entry challenges their ability to meet reporting deadlines. Perhaps in response, more than 25 percent plan to centralize their fund administration data into a single database in the next 12 months.

"The findings support our belief that the industry is serious about employing automation as a strategic initiative to expand their business," said Kirk Botula, executive vice president and chief operating Officer of Confluence. "As more of these companies become global, fund administration automation is a critical strategy to increase productivity and reduce costs, while allowing them to grow efficiently and meet regulatory and investor requirements."

Fund administration involves activities that support the process of managing collective investments such as mutual funds. These activities include preparing financial statements; holdings, performance, and pricing reports; documentation to support post-trade compliance; benchmarking calculations; investor marketing reports; and more.

Fund administration has become more complex and demanding in recent years as regulatory requirements and the number of investment products have simultaneously increased. Yet, use of multiple manual spreadsheets for these processes is still the "rule" at many companies. According to the Confluence survey, 26 per cent of respondents rely on these spreadsheets for more than half of their fund administration processes, and another 23 per cent rely on them for 26 to 50 per cent of these processes.

The majority of respondents also believe that it is very/extremely important to automate fund administration in order to:

- Minimize reporting errors (84 per cent);

- Control administration costs (54 per cent);

- Improve data integrity (72 per cent); and

- Increase the scalability of operations (71 per cent).

Additionally, seven in ten respondents (72 per cent) believe that automating fund administration will also benefit their organizations by enabling staff to spend more time on strategic issues.