Magic Wand Survey Reveals What Investment Leaders Really Want in 2025

A new study asked 500+ financial services leaders a simple question: "If you had a magic wand to accelerate your firm's digital transformation, what would you ask for?"

The top answer wasn't more AI models or flashier dashboards. 27% wanted a single platform that works front to back across regions, asset classes, and functions. Another 21% just wanted a single source of data they could actually use across their firm.

Translation: Investment professionals are drowning in disconnected systems and fragmented data.

The Real State of Digital Transformation

Broadridge's 2025 study surveyed leaders at firms managing $83 billion in average AUM. The results show a massive gap between digital ambitions and operational reality.

The good news: 86% of firms use cloud technology, 57% have deployed AI, and firms plan to spend 29% of their IT budgets on innovation (up from 22% last year).

The bad news: Nearly half (47%) are still dealing with data silos, and 40% have ongoing data quality issues. When asked about their digital maturity, 30% of leaders called themselves "digital leaders." But when pressed on specific operational areas where they're actually implementing digital transformation, only 26% qualified as leaders.

That disconnect tells the whole story.

What's Actually Working

AI adoption is accelerating fast. 72% of firms are making moderate to large AI investments this year, up from 40% in 2024. The reason? Real productivity gains that are too obvious to ignore.

68% of professionals see AI's biggest impact on employee productivity. 35% expect to see ROI within six months. Investment teams are using AI-powered note takers, research drafting tools, and data visualization that deliver immediate, measurable benefits.

But here's the catch: "You need to have good data before you can use AI in an effective way," noted one CIO at a global investment bank. Without clean, connected data, even the best AI tools hit a wall.

The Data Foundation Problem

The study reveals why so many digital initiatives stall out. One operations head at a Japanese global investment bank explained: "If I could do everything from scratch, it would be much easier, but in the case of having a lot of legacy systems, especially Japanese vendor systems, it is so painful to remove, to replace."

The cost is real: Firms spend up to 30% of their time managing data quality issues. Research teams waste 12 hours weekly just looking for information, plus another 5.3 hours waiting for data from colleagues.

For mid-sized investment managers, this fragmentation is particularly brutal. You face enterprise-level complexity without enterprise-level resources.

What Leaders Actually Need

The magic wand responses reveal three core priorities:

1. Platform consolidation (27%): Front-to-back integration across all functions

2. Data unification (21%): Single source of truth that actually works

3. Personalization at scale (22%): Seamless stakeholder experiences

Notice what's missing? Nobody asked for more point solutions or additional data vendors. The industry is tired of bolt-on fixes that create more complexity.

The Execution Reality

Legacy systems are the real enemy. 46% of firms say legacy technology limits their operational resilience strategy. One European CIO summed it up: "We'd all love to be doing AI and other funky tech. But the reality is that our tech teams are focused on audit remediation, regulatory responses, upgrading technology, and upgrading data."

Meanwhile, regulatory pressure keeps mounting. Compliance costs hit $270 billion annually across financial services, with mid-sized firms spending 17.5% of net revenue on compliance (the highest percentage of any firm category).

Three Takeaways for Investment Leaders

1. Stop Adding, Start Connecting Before implementing another point solution, focus on connecting what you have. "Firms that are still trying to drive transformation by bolting on point solutions are quickly starting to realize there's a limit to how much they can accomplish before they address fundamental platform flaws," said Jason Birmingham, Broadridge's Global Head of Engineering.

2. Data Strategy Is Your Transformation Strategy Every successful AI implementation, compliance automation, and client experience improvement starts with clean, accessible data. Fix the foundation first.

3. Think Workflows, Not Tools The most successful firms focus on transforming specific workflows rather than deploying impressive technology. Start with high-impact, repeatable processes where automation delivers immediate value.

The Bottom Line

Investment professionals know what they want: unified platforms, connected data, and workflows that actually work together. The challenge isn't identifying solutions; it's implementing them without disrupting day-to-day operations.

The firms making real progress aren't necessarily the ones with the biggest technology budgets. They're the ones with clear data strategies and the discipline to build connected systems rather than collections of point solutions.

Your best investment ideas are already inside your firm. The question is whether your technology helps you find them or keeps them buried in silos.

~Michael Prichard, Founder & CEO

TLDR: What you need to know about AI in Finance

• Goldman’s AI assistant: interview takeaways. Firmwide use with productivity gains. Reminder to avoid overreliance.

• BlackRock to invest £500m in UK data centres with Digital Gravity signals continued AI infrastructure buildout.

• Agentic AI in risk is moving from hype to Real deployments in credit and underwriting. Autonomy remains bounded.

BASIS AGENT OF THE WEEK - Listen for Topics of Interest

Once Basis connects to your tools (email, chat, research notes, models, meeting transcripts), it listens in the background and alerts you only when a watched ticker/theme/risk appears, sending a short summary with source links. No new workflow, full audit trail.

Example internal signals

• Model change: Analyst updates a key assumption → Basis notifies you with what changed and a link to the model.

• Internal meeting recording: “Sales cycles for TICKR are ~90 days” → Basis emails a brief summary plus the exact timestamped clip.

• Teams message: “Renewal for TICKR’s largest customer moved to next month” → Basis pings the owner with the message and links to related notes.

About Shift
Investment research shouldn't be this hard. Shift turns your firm's scattered knowledge into powerful insights with AI built for how you actually work. We're a team of builders and experts based in Charlottesville, VA. Learn more at ShiftHQ.ai.