January 14, 2025 — The disruptive changes experienced by asset managers over the past several years could actually accelerate in 2025.
The asset management industry has been evolving at an unprecedented rate as assets flow out of traditional market mainstays and into private markets, passive strategies, and emerging vehicles and channels, and technology transforms the way institutions invest and managers compete.
In a new report, Top trends in asset management for 2025, Crisil Coalition Greenwich draws on its global research and relationships with asset manager and investment consultant clients around the world to identify the most important trends to watch in the year ahead, including:
- The semi-liquid revolution: The sale of semi-liquid alternative products into the wealth channel will be a key source of AUM and revenue growth for asset managers in 2025.
- ETFs: the cradle of innovation in asset management: The boom in exchange-traded funds could gain even more momentum in 2025 as ETFs solidify their status in the industry as the place where innovation happens.
- Great service in private strategies: The boom in private markets is attracting some of the world’s biggest traditional asset managers, and these new entrants are resetting expectations about what client service can (and should) look like in private markets.
- ESG rift divides a global industry: The election of Trump will make an already complicated situation even more challenging for global asset managers attempting to navigate diverging views on ESG investing.
Top trends in asset management for 2025 also reviews the increasing importance of relationship managers at a time of growing market complexity, a potential slowdown in the customization creep that has defined client relationships for the past several years, and some dramatic changes in the relationship between asset managers and investment consultants.