Despite the London heat, AIMA’s third annual Technology and Innovation Day enjoyed a strong turnout. The event brought together thematic discussions, keynotes and live technology demonstrations to shine a light on how technology and artificial intelligence are transforming asset management. Key themes from the day include:

• Participants highlighted practical AI use cases, the importance of experimentation and measuring return on investment, while emphasising that human oversight remains critical given the risks of hallucinations and the firm’s ultimate accountability for outputs.
• Speakers also examined AI implementation challenges, including operational risk management, vendor due diligence, cost allocation, and the ongoing training and education required to prepare organisations and professionals for the future of fund management.
• Cyber risks that concern CTOs and CISOs most today, including targeted phishing campaigns, ransomware, data leakage, identity compromise, insider threats and attacks originating through third-party vendors. Cyber resilience requires a proactive and holistic approach, combining technology, governance, people and processes to help firms navigate an increasingly complex and fast-moving threat landscape.
• Effective cyber risk management depends on strong governance frameworks, clearly defined controls, ongoing employee education and board-level awareness and accountability. Speakers stressed the importance of ensuring that senior leadership understands cyber risks and is actively involved in oversight and preparedness. Practical measures discussed included regular cyber awareness training, simulated attacks and tabletop exercises, comprehensive incident response planning, and robust third-party and vendor risk management programmes.
• The rapidly evolving role of AI in cybersecurity was discussed with speakers highlighting both the opportunities AI presents in enhancing threat detection, monitoring and incident response, and the risks it introduces. Particular attention was given to “shadow AI”—the unauthorised use of AI tools by employees—and the emerging challenges posed by agentic AI systems, which can act autonomously and potentially create new attack vectors or governance concerns.
• Firms continue to refine their governance frameworks to ensure that they explicitly deal with AI deployment – both within the firm and by vendors. The expectation is that regulatory and investor scrutiny of firms’ controls will continue to expand, calling for firms to further refine what they do.
• We are entering an era in which public authorities will increasingly use AI as part of their delivery of public services to bring greater efficiency and personalisation. But doing this in a way that is transparent and engenders trust will be key.
• Technology is rapidly transforming aerospace and defence, in ways that few could have predicted a few years ago. Advances in robotics and AI decision-making tools will further shape the future of modern warfare. State-level cyber attacks remain prevalent and require sophisticated responses by individual nations.   

AIMA has a suite of resources to help firms navigate AI adoption and cyber and operational resilience, as well as a wide spread of member working groups devoted to these topics.