Kurtosys today announced the results of its annual survey, which seeks to find out how marketers at asset management firms are reacting to changes in the digital landscape. The report revealed that almost half (48%) of all respondents believed that regulation would be the most disruptive force to the asset management industry, even more so than the likes of fintech startups and developments in blockchain technology.

Last year, the survey sought to find out exactly what content marketing strategies were popular amongst asset managers in order to display fund information to their investors. This year, Kurtosys wanted to explore how these trends would be affected by the financial world’s increasing compliance issues.

The incoming MiFID II directive, for example, had a significant influence on those surveyed; its requirements for firms to increase the transparency of fund literature and investment research has caused many companies to adopt new strategies, and fast. However only 50% of respondents said that their company has invested in regulatory technology.

Content marketing remains the most popular marketing method for asset managers (63%), with 65% of respondents stating that they expect to increase their investment in the content marketing space in the near future. Social media was considered equal in importance with email campaigns, both, at 42%.

The most important factors for a website’s design are considered to be ease of navigation (71%) and user experience (61%). Many asset managers still use in-house talent to build their websites rather than outsourcing (69%).

An overwhelming 70% of marketers are planning to invest more into the website, displaying the growing interest in the need for asset managers to substantiate the quality of their digital output. Other focuses for investment included security issues (49%), which dwarfed the interest in paying for MarTech or cloud solutions (37%).

Kurtosys CEO, Mash Patel commented: “The survey results reflect the growing influence of content marketing within the finance industry, and precedence placed on user experience. Considering half of the survey respondents have not invested in regulatory technology, it will be interesting to see if increased regulation will make this number increase in future years.”