Description
When Institutional Adoption Outpaces Operational Reality
Volumes are rising. Automation works. AI is everywhere. Digital Assets are here. You've read that report already. This one starts where the others stopped — taking a closer look at the firms that listened, invested accordingly, and still can't scale.
AutoRek's 2026 ICM Report, drawn from 250 senior operations, finance, and technology leaders across the US and UK, takes that contradiction seriously. Automation of operations didn't fail. The real issue is the foundation firms built on top of — legacy systems, layers of fragmented data and new asset classes the system was never designed for.
The report maps where the infrastructure gap is widest heading into 2026, what the firms pulling ahead did differently, and why most firms invested in the right things but in the wrong order.
Download this report to get what the other reports won't tell you: the order that actually worked.
Inside the Report
The Scalability Problem: Years of automation investment. Most firms still can't scale. The reason isn't what you'd expect.
- Digital Assets Meet Legacy Infrastructure: More firms are processing digital assets than ever —but the systems handling them weren't built for it — and it's showing up in ways firms didn't see coming.
- The Manual Process Tax: Firms know manual processes cost them — yet most are looking at the wrong number.
- Using AI vs. Integrating AI: 98% of firms say they use AI. Only 14% have integrated it into operations. See how the 14% have done it (and why it's working).
- The Data Constraints: What every other pressure on this list eventually traces back to.
