The funds management industry in Thailand is one of the most competitive and fast growing markets in Asia, and investment management technology to help promote this growth is being quickly adopted. 

Assisted dramatically by the healthy retail distribution that exists within the Kingdom, the industry manages over USD70Billion in AUM and has seen excellent levels of growth in AUM in recent years.

The market is dominated by mutual funds, followed by a somewhat smaller proportion of investment through provident and private funds. With over 5,000 funds available to investors, there is a strong appetite by the Thai's for short-term money market exposure, domestic fixed income as well as a growing demand for exposure to foreign debt in the likes of Korea and to a lesser extent, China.

Trade volumes are also on the increase in this growing economy; The Stock Exchange of Thailand recently reported daily average trading volumes at almost THB30 Billion (USD921m) and derivative trading up 120 percent in 2011, making Thailand the second highest in South East Asia in terms of trade volumes (behind Singapore) and number one in terms of share turnover velocity last year. Trade volumes and the retail nature of the industry in Thailand poses many challenges for fund managers; the sheer number of individual funds typically run by each fund manager means that managing and implementing investment decisions is often a lengthy and difficult process with manual input and much room for human error.

Trade execution has also traditionally been a very manual and telephone driven workflow, and down-stream trade matching & processing has lacked much of the automation many other markets in the region have adopted. Whereas technology is often a challenge for growing markets, Thailand's growth has come at a time when technology and related services are not only readily available, but are tried and tested globally and are therefore proven and mature. As a result, global technologies are being adopted by local Thai asset managers at a great pace in a bid to keep ahead of their competitors.

Global brokers who cover Thailand have added full support for Thai securities to their electronic execution services, algorithmic trading and DMA offerings; and Thai buy-sides are starting to embrace them and immediately realise their benefits. Global buy-side front-office solution providers that have invested in Asia have added support for local Thai requirements and workflows and now provide portfolio management, modeling, order & execution management as well as compliance, performance and risk to both global and local funds management and private fund firms in the market.

Integration technology between back- and front-office systems is also now at a point where organisations can confidently choose to have their own local back-office system to handle local accounting methodologies whilst still having a seamless integration to their chosen world class front-office solution. 

Thailand is in a fantastic position to embrace the latest global technologies at a time when it is growing rapidly, and the market is certainly demonstrating that it is ready to make that investment.