The real bottleneck is inconsistent data
26 Nov 2025
Despite new tools and rising interest in AI, speakers at CorpActions 2025 warned that poor issuer data and fragmented standards remain the biggest obstacles to smoother, safer corporate actions
Image: neoleo/stock.adobe.com
Corporate actions may be one of the most technical corners of financial services, but the conversations at the CorpActions 2025 conference, held in London on 4 November, landed on something far more straightforward — the basics still are not working the way they need to.
Throughout the day, speakers described everyday challenges that — late announcements, multiple versions of the same event, unstructured PDFs, conflicting market conventions.
But these seemingly small problems create much larger issues when multiplied across thousands of events, hundreds of markets, and increasingly tight deadlines.
It became clear that beneath all the talk of digitalisation, AI, and tokenisation, the industry is still wrestling with a more fundamental question: how can you modernise something when the foundation is not consistent?
Volumes are rising but budgets are not
The conference opened with fresh survey data that framed the entire conversation. Event volumes have increased by roughly 25 per cent year-on-year, with the steepest rises coming from Asia.
But automation levels have fallen for many firms, and budgets for asset-servicing functions have risen by only about five per cent — effectively flat once inflation is factored in.
A panelist said that market changes are moving faster than the tools supporting them.
This mismatch between workload and resources has forced firms to rely on manual processes and human checks, especially for the events that are too complex or too inconsistent to automate.
On stage, panellists did not shy away from admitting how challenging this has become.
Another speaker talked about how automation can sometimes expose, rather than fix, the weaknesses in the data being fed into systems: “Before automation, you might not notice the inconsistencies. Once you automate, they become obvious.”
In other words, the problem is not technology, it is the information being used by that technology.
Why issuer data remains the hardest part to fix
If there was a recurring frustration highlighted throughout the day, it was the state of issuer data.
Speakers from multiple firms highlighted the same issues — announcements still arriving as PDFs or free-text, different versions of the same event across listings, conflicting dates and rates from various sources, delays that push some notices past key deadlines, and formats that differ widely from market to market. This inconsistent starting point forces every player in the chain — data vendors, custodians, asset managers, administrators — to spend time interpreting, comparing, validating and sometimes correcting the basics before they can even begin processing an event.
Data vendors described just how much work this requires.
Firms still manually monitor stock exchanges, issuer websites, regulatory notices and government updates around the world.
A company spoke about processing 150,000 to 300,000 barrier events per day for structured products which is a reminder that even the event triggers themselves are not always straightforward or predictable. As one speaker put it, “we are all doing variations of the same manual work, just at different points in the chain”.
Why the automation drops
It is not that the industry does not believe in automation. It is that the path to automation keeps breaking.
Mandatory events tend to automate well, but voluntary events — where investors have to choose from multiple options — still require close attention. The information around them often changes after the initial announcement or arrives in formats that do not align across markets. It is this loop that many speakers said must be broken — and the only way to do that is by improving upstream standards.
AI: Useful, but not the fix people hope for
AI inevitably came up throughout the day — and the mood around it was noticeably grounded.
Another spokesperson spoke about experiments using large language models to read and interpret corporate action announcements.
These pilots showed potential, but even the strongest results required human validation because the raw information from issuers was not consistent enough to rely on completely.
Other speakers described AI tools that help classify claims, sort emails or extract rate information from press releases.
But they also pointed out the limitations such as: AI struggles with unpredictable event types; it cannot replace missing or incorrect issuer data; it amplifies the structure that already exists, good or bad; it works well on patterns, but not on one-off or unusual events.
The conclusion was the same across multiple sessions — AI will be part of the future, but it cannot fix the fundamental issue of non-standardised data.
Tokenisation raises excitement
The digital assets panel shifted the conversation into the future, but even there, the recurring theme was complexity.
Euroclear described issuing digital bonds on distributed ledger technology (DLT) but noted that this still required maintaining the traditional ledger in parallel.
That means more identifiers, more workflow steps, and more reconciliation points. In certain cases, managing a tokenised instrument can be “five times more complex” than its traditional counterpart.
Speakers emphasised that until there is agreement across markets on how tokenised assets should be identified, settled and recorded, the operational burden will increase — not decrease.
Tokenisation may change the format of the asset, but without strong data standards underneath, the process becomes harder, not easier.
Front offices have started engaging
A notable positive shift came from the session on proxy voting and front office engagement.
A panelist expressed how portfolio managers now expect cleaner, more accessible information and want to participate more directly in voting and election decisions.
User-friendly interfaces, timely notifications and communication in clients’ preferred languages are becoming the norm rather than the exception.
The front office getting closer to the process could help drive better expectations around data quality — a subtle but important cultural shift noted by the panel.
The industry is short of alignment
By the end of the conference, the message tying everything together was hard to miss.
The industry has plenty of innovation. There is no lack of tools, vendors or pilot programmes.
But across conversations about automation, AI, regulation and digital assets, one barrier kept resurfacing: inconsistent issuer data and a lack of shared global standards.
Every panel, from custody to digital assets, data vendors to the buy side, pointed back to this same foundation.
Until that foundation is strengthened, even the most advanced technologies will continue to run into the same obstacles.
The takeaway from the day was not pessimistic rather more realistic.
The problems are known. The solutions are not groundbreaking. But the coordination required to fix them remains the industry’s biggest hurdle.
As one speaker summed it up: “Technology can’t outrun a lack of standards.
“Fix the data first, and everything else becomes possible.”
Throughout the day, speakers described everyday challenges that — late announcements, multiple versions of the same event, unstructured PDFs, conflicting market conventions.
But these seemingly small problems create much larger issues when multiplied across thousands of events, hundreds of markets, and increasingly tight deadlines.
It became clear that beneath all the talk of digitalisation, AI, and tokenisation, the industry is still wrestling with a more fundamental question: how can you modernise something when the foundation is not consistent?
Volumes are rising but budgets are not
The conference opened with fresh survey data that framed the entire conversation. Event volumes have increased by roughly 25 per cent year-on-year, with the steepest rises coming from Asia.
But automation levels have fallen for many firms, and budgets for asset-servicing functions have risen by only about five per cent — effectively flat once inflation is factored in.
A panelist said that market changes are moving faster than the tools supporting them.
This mismatch between workload and resources has forced firms to rely on manual processes and human checks, especially for the events that are too complex or too inconsistent to automate.
On stage, panellists did not shy away from admitting how challenging this has become.
Another speaker talked about how automation can sometimes expose, rather than fix, the weaknesses in the data being fed into systems: “Before automation, you might not notice the inconsistencies. Once you automate, they become obvious.”
In other words, the problem is not technology, it is the information being used by that technology.
Why issuer data remains the hardest part to fix
If there was a recurring frustration highlighted throughout the day, it was the state of issuer data.
Speakers from multiple firms highlighted the same issues — announcements still arriving as PDFs or free-text, different versions of the same event across listings, conflicting dates and rates from various sources, delays that push some notices past key deadlines, and formats that differ widely from market to market. This inconsistent starting point forces every player in the chain — data vendors, custodians, asset managers, administrators — to spend time interpreting, comparing, validating and sometimes correcting the basics before they can even begin processing an event.
Data vendors described just how much work this requires.
Firms still manually monitor stock exchanges, issuer websites, regulatory notices and government updates around the world.
A company spoke about processing 150,000 to 300,000 barrier events per day for structured products which is a reminder that even the event triggers themselves are not always straightforward or predictable. As one speaker put it, “we are all doing variations of the same manual work, just at different points in the chain”.
Why the automation drops
It is not that the industry does not believe in automation. It is that the path to automation keeps breaking.
Mandatory events tend to automate well, but voluntary events — where investors have to choose from multiple options — still require close attention. The information around them often changes after the initial announcement or arrives in formats that do not align across markets. It is this loop that many speakers said must be broken — and the only way to do that is by improving upstream standards.
AI: Useful, but not the fix people hope for
AI inevitably came up throughout the day — and the mood around it was noticeably grounded.
Another spokesperson spoke about experiments using large language models to read and interpret corporate action announcements.
These pilots showed potential, but even the strongest results required human validation because the raw information from issuers was not consistent enough to rely on completely.
Other speakers described AI tools that help classify claims, sort emails or extract rate information from press releases.
But they also pointed out the limitations such as: AI struggles with unpredictable event types; it cannot replace missing or incorrect issuer data; it amplifies the structure that already exists, good or bad; it works well on patterns, but not on one-off or unusual events.
The conclusion was the same across multiple sessions — AI will be part of the future, but it cannot fix the fundamental issue of non-standardised data.
Tokenisation raises excitement
The digital assets panel shifted the conversation into the future, but even there, the recurring theme was complexity.
Euroclear described issuing digital bonds on distributed ledger technology (DLT) but noted that this still required maintaining the traditional ledger in parallel.
That means more identifiers, more workflow steps, and more reconciliation points. In certain cases, managing a tokenised instrument can be “five times more complex” than its traditional counterpart.
Speakers emphasised that until there is agreement across markets on how tokenised assets should be identified, settled and recorded, the operational burden will increase — not decrease.
Tokenisation may change the format of the asset, but without strong data standards underneath, the process becomes harder, not easier.
Front offices have started engaging
A notable positive shift came from the session on proxy voting and front office engagement.
A panelist expressed how portfolio managers now expect cleaner, more accessible information and want to participate more directly in voting and election decisions.
User-friendly interfaces, timely notifications and communication in clients’ preferred languages are becoming the norm rather than the exception.
The front office getting closer to the process could help drive better expectations around data quality — a subtle but important cultural shift noted by the panel.
The industry is short of alignment
By the end of the conference, the message tying everything together was hard to miss.
The industry has plenty of innovation. There is no lack of tools, vendors or pilot programmes.
But across conversations about automation, AI, regulation and digital assets, one barrier kept resurfacing: inconsistent issuer data and a lack of shared global standards.
Every panel, from custody to digital assets, data vendors to the buy side, pointed back to this same foundation.
Until that foundation is strengthened, even the most advanced technologies will continue to run into the same obstacles.
The takeaway from the day was not pessimistic rather more realistic.
The problems are known. The solutions are not groundbreaking. But the coordination required to fix them remains the industry’s biggest hurdle.
As one speaker summed it up: “Technology can’t outrun a lack of standards.
“Fix the data first, and everything else becomes possible.”
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