A new report from AutoRek finds that digital assets may have a few surprises for Ops.
Securities operations for digital assets constitute the “greatest operational challenge” for nearly 40 percent of those surveyed by provider AutoRek for the new report, “The Infrastructure Gap: Capital Markets Operations 2026.”
T
he cutting-edge asset class is causing survey participants to adjust to new settlement and custody models, and a “significantly higher reconciliation complexity” that strains “legacy data pipelines and control frameworks that were built for standardized, predictable lifecycles,” according to the report.
The current report covers and compares the same issues as the one for 2025, and the digital asset concerns growing to 39 percent represents a 12 percent jump from 27 percent last year — the sharpest single-year jump in the report, officials say.
“As digital asset exposure grows, operational complexity rises disproportionately. More formats, counterparties, and settlement methods translate directly into more exceptions and operational effort,” according to the report. Most capital markets operations were designed around standardized securities and predictable lifecycles. Digital assets introduce fragmented data structures and new processing requirements that legacy tools were never built to support.”
The change that is spurring more concern is that “digital assets are no longer experimental,” the report notes. “What was once a limited exposure for innovation teams or specialist desks has rapidly moved into the operational mainstream. Trading, reconciliation, and reporting teams are now expected to process digital asset activity alongside traditional securities — often using the same systems, controls, and staffing models designed for far simpler instruments.”
Like other major trends, “the shift is happening faster than operational infrastructure can adapt. Fifty-nine percent of firms now work with digital assets, and 39 percent cite them as the single greatest data and operational challenge they face, up sharply year over year (from 27 percent to 40 percent among U.S. firms). Among organizations managing more than $/£20bn, this rises further to 45 percent, underscoring how complexity compounds at scale.”
The core problem is that “unlike traditional securities, digital assets introduce non-standard data formats,” the report finds. “The operational challenge isn’t the asset class itself; it’s that digital assets bring different settlement models, different counterparties, different data formats, and up to 18 decimal places of precision versus 8 for traditional assets. Legacy ops infrastructure wasn’t built for any of that.”
Looking ahead, the report notes that:
- The embrace of digital assets “will keep climbing as an operational stressor, especially as volumes increase,” according to the report;
- Operational complexity is increasing: “More formats, counterparties, and settlement models create more exceptions;
- Legacy systems will fall behind on coverage: “Point solutions struggle to support new asset classes quickly;”
- .Firms have to develop their readiness: “Firms that adapt faster can safely expand into higher-growth asset segments.”
The full report can be accessed here: https://shorturl.at/hRV3U
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