Fund company executives’ top concern is the data integrity in their fund reports, according to a Confluence Global Fund Administration survey.

More than 130 executives from Europe and North America cite data integrity as their top back-office challenge.

Confluence released this and other findings of its 2010 survey of US, Canadian, and European executives involved in fund administration during the Association of the Luxembourg Financial Industry’s Spring Conference on 23-24 March 2010.

“As investors call for increased transparency and regulators step up reporting requirements, fund companies face greater pressure to make more information available more frequently,” says Kirk Botula, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Confluence, a provider of investment management data automation. “Widespread use of manual processes and spreadsheets increases the potential for errors occurring, and brings a heightened urgency to putting automation safeguards in place.”

The study found that the majority of respondents (86 per cent) worry about the mistakes that result from manual fund administration processes many fund companies still follow, such as developing reports from data entered and re-entered from spreadsheets.

In addition, nearly 72 percent of respondents worry that manual processes impede their ability to meet reporting deadlines.

Fund administration leaders see automation as a way to eliminate risk factors such as manual errors, increase the scalability of their organisations without adding staff, and elevate service levels through efficiencies.

Nearly 60 per cent of respondents want to replace their manual processes with automated technology in the next 12-24 months.