Covid-19 caught everyone by surprise. But amid the tragedy, financial markets held up, supported by asset service providers who shouldered the burden of taking care of investors’ requirements amidst the uncertainties and anxiety brought on by the pandemic.

What’s surprising is how asset service providers stepped up despite the lockdowns, social distancing, work-from-home arrangements, and the unprecedented volumes of market activity.

By performing their jobs so well during the pandemic, asset service providers may have become a victim of their own success since institutional clients can no longer be happy with anything less after the pandemic.

“The challenge is to be able to repeat this performance in a post-Covid environment. Critical, of course, are the partnerships and collaboration that are a feature of plenty of the successes The Asset heard during this year’s awards review. They will become the norm – that will differentiate – those that will do well in the coming years,” says The Asset editor-in-chief Daniel Yu, during the award ceremonies for The Asset Triple A Asset Servicing Awards 2021.

This was borne out in the largest survey of asset owners and managers conducted by The Asset Benchmark Research for this year’s awards wherein nearly three out of four respondents to the Asset Servicing Asia Insights 2021 survey say they were very satisfied – defined as near-zero cases of errors with their service providers during this pandemic.

“If anything, this health emergency became the spark that accelerated decision-making… to embrace automation, adopt seamless connectivity such as the use of cloud computing and APIs, and in turn, with expansive data and analytics, contributing to enhanced client experience,” says Yu.

The winners of the regional awards for The Asset Triple A Asset Servicing Awards 2021 will be announced in a virtual event on July 26, starting at 5pm. For those interested please go to this link.