“Data is king” — insights from FE fundinfo Better Connected Luxembourg 2025
As part of FE fundinfo's 2025 Better Connected World Tour, leaders from across the investment landscape met in Luxembourg on 16 October 2025 for insights and animated discussion around driving greater value and innovation across fund operations.
Here are some key insights from our stop in Luxembourg.
“The key message from FE fundinfo’s Better Connected event in Luxembourg: data is king.
“Your data is what sets you apart – and if you control your data, then you can lead your own disruption.”
So says FE Fundinfo Chief Technology and Data Officer Paul Ronan, who recently took an expanded role at the financial data company. His responsibilities now cover driving FE fundinfo’s technology, data and AI strategy, along with the ongoing enhancement of its global Nexus platform.
Ronan has overseen the creation of a purpose-built AI enablement layer, Nexus AI, which launched in early October. Nexus AI, augmented with the recently-acquired Lunar AI, can streamline processes and investment workflows by automating tasks like compliance checks, documentation, client servicing and unifying data.
Clients can even access AI sandboxes to experiment with their fund data and see how AI can draw additional insights from their datasets.
“Your data is what sets you apart,” said Ronan. “If you control your data, you can lead your own disruption.”
He continued: “Your data is probably the only moat that is deep enough to help you survive this transformation. There are a lot of aggressors coming into the marketplace, and we see both horizontal and vertical challenges as a result. If you’re on top of your data, you probably have a chance. That is probably the only moat you have.”
"Your data is what sets you apart. If you control your data, you can lead your own disruption."
The investment fund industry indeed faces a bevy of challenges. FE fundinfo has set out to tackle the flashpoints underpinning three main issues, as explained by CEO Liam Healy.
These include: how to increase efficiency as the industry transforms; how to stay compliant whilst launching products; and how it all leads to growth.
As the world’s second-largest investment funds centre, Healy noted that Luxembourg is the ‘epicentre of our industry’. Regulatory pressure is growing, market consolidation is on the cards, operating models are growing, shifting wealth demographics are around the corner, and private assets are on the rise. “We think we play a unique role in the industry to help facilitate that,” he added.
FE fundinfo’s core focus – global fund data – is never going to change, said Healy. However, this data is only as valuable as the ‘scaffolding’ that surrounds it. Data must be managed and exchanged, and you need the ability to analyse it and extract insights.
That’s where the Nexus AI platform comes in, bringing with it agentic functionality that will boost human productivity and allow people to better leverage the cutting-edge technology.
Looking towards private assets
Private markets and AI were in the spotlight during a panel discussion moderated by Paul Ronan and featuring insights from Stéphane Pesch, President of the Luxembourg Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (LPEA), and Ankit Jaint, Managing Director of Product and Strategy at Carne Group.
“Everybody is working on AI adoption,” said Ankit Jaint. “A lot of people are in the experimental phase, but I would say we are very close to saying the proof-of-concept can be converted to reality and production systems.”
AI use is split into two categories, he said: one concerns ‘personal productivity’, such as the use of chatbots or Copilot; the other is around ‘enterprise AI’ which involves increased efficiency and automation across an organisation.
What’s particularly helpful in Luxembourg has been a ‘national push’ behind AI, per Stéphane Pesch, who added that the LPEA also runs ‘AI Lab’ meetings. Luxembourg has also benefitted from an early belief in data centres, and its IT infrastructure is ‘robust’.
The country also won a tender for a high-performance computing model (Euro HPC), while the AI Factory will also boost education around AI. Luxembourg already had a ‘good data culture’, noted Pesch, ‘but to move and integrate AI was another topic’.
“Instead of just staying at the level of ‘we’re all buzzing around these words’, let’s see what can be done,” he said.
AI can also unlock value when it comes to unstructured data in private assets. “That’s a very important area for us, especially because more than half the book we have now is private assets,” said Jaint. On the illiquid side, for example, you’re still getting a lot of PDFs and Word documents and many different types of data. “There’s no standardisation,” he continued, indicating the major challenge in how to make data entry and storage more systematic and efficient.
“AI has a big role in enabling standardisation so that data for illiquid assets can be put in the same straight-through processing we have for liquid assets,” he said. This would allow checks to run more quickly and increase response times.
The democratisation of private assets and the emergence of hybrid portfolios could force alternative managers to be more transparent and produce different types of reports, added Pesch, which is something that mass affluence investors would expect.
"AI has a big role in enabling standardisation so that data for illiquid assets can be put in the same straight-through processing we have for liquid assets"
Are we in the grip of an AI bubble?
While tech leaders remain bullish on the potential for AI to revolutionise operational efficiencies, some market analysts have raised concerns over the potential for an ‘AI bubble’ to wreak havoc in a similar fashion to the Dot Com crash of the late 1990s.
To that, Ronan noted that the late 19th century saw a ‘railroad bubble’ in the US, with 4% of GDP invested in railroads at the time. While this was a case of over-investment, he noted that less than 1% of US GDP is currently invested in AI.
So, are we in an AI bubble? A quick poll of the room gave the answer: no – this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Thanks to Lydia Linna for the insights.
