The expectation gap
Investing is more accessible today than ever before.
Today, an individual can buy shares in a global technology company, trade digital assets, or move money across borders in seconds, all from a smartphone. The experience is seamless, intuitive, and designed around speed.
And yet, when that same investor, or even a large institutional client, tries to access a traditional investment fund, the experience is often far more complex.
This contradiction is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. In many cases, it is easier for an individual to buy shares in a U.S.-listed company through an app than it is for a pension fund to subscribe to a fund locally. That gap speaks to a deeper issue within the industry: not a lack of demand, but a mismatch between expectations and reality.
A new generation is now entering the market with a very different set of assumptions. These investors have grown up in a digital-first world, where services are instant, interfaces are simple, and access is unrestricted. Their expectations are not shaped by the asset management industry, but by the platforms they use every day, from e-commerce to digital banking and beyond.
As a result, investing is no longer judged solely on performance. It is judged on experience.
Recent data underscores the scale of this shift. Around 59 million Brazilians already invest in financial products, while a further 18 million say they intend to start investing, highlighting the significant expansion of the investor base still to come.[1]
A market opening, but not yet evolving
At the same time, the structure of the market is beginning to shift. For decades, distribution was largely tied to banking relationships, with investors accessing a relatively limited set of products. That model is opening up. Platforms are expanding, investors are seeking greater diversification, and the regulatory changes introduced under CVM 175 have accelerated access to international markets.
This shift is already visible in participation levels. Individual investors in Brazil have significantly expanded their investment portfolios in recent years, with total individual investments reaching R$7.22 trillion by September 2024, an increase of 11.5% from the end of 2023.[2]
Retail investors are increasingly exploring offshore opportunities, often through digital channels, while local institutions look to broaden their product offering and connect to a wider ecosystem.
The trend indicates there should be more choice, more connectivity, and greater participation.
Industry bodies such as ANBIMA have already highlighted the need to improve efficiency and investor experience as cross-border investing expands, reinforcing that access alone is not enough.
But access alone does not define a modern investment experience.
Even where digital interfaces exist, they do not always reflect what is happening beneath the surface. What appears to be a streamlined process can still rely on fragmented systems, manual intervention, and batch-based operations behind the scenes. The result is an experience that feels digital, but isn’t.
For investors accustomed to real-time interaction, this creates a growing disconnect. The industry has made progress in how investing looks, but not always in how it works.
Why infrastructure now defines experience
This is where the conversation around automation needs to evolve.
Traditionally, automation has been framed in terms of efficiency – reducing costs, lowering error rates, and improving operational resilience. These benefits remain critical, particularly in a more transparent regulatory environment. But they are no longer the full story.
Today, automation is what enables the experience investors expect.
Firms can’t deliver fast, intuitive, low-cost investing if the infrastructure supporting it is slow, fragmented, or dependent on manual processes. A modern front end cannot compensate for an outdated back end. If the underlying systems cannot operate seamlessly, the investor experience will always fall short.
In markets where this transformation has already taken place, the impact is clear. High levels of automation and connectivity have allowed firms to process large volumes of transactions efficiently, even in periods of volatility, while maintaining consistent service levels. This creates a clear competitive advantage: digital leaders can onboard new institutional clients more than twice as fast and at a quarter of the cost, while also achieving significantly stronger growth and profitability. More importantly, this operational strength translates directly into a better experience for the end investor – faster execution, greater transparency, and fewer points of friction.[3]
Brazil now stands at a similar inflection point.
Competing for the next generation of investors
With the regulatory foundations of CVM 175 largely in place, the focus is shifting from compliance to competitiveness. At the same time, broader trends – from cross-border investing to the emergence of tokenised models – are raising expectations even further.
Investors are no longer comparing fund transactions to other financial products. They are comparing them to the best digital experiences available anywhere.
The future of the industry will not be defined solely by the products it offers, but by how those products are delivered.
For Brazil’s asset managers, administrators, and platforms, this presents a significant opportunity. By investing in the infrastructure required to support a fully connected, automated ecosystem, they can align the fund experience with the expectations of a new generation of investors – one that values speed, simplicity, and access as much as performance.
Those that succeed will not only improve efficiency behind the scenes. They will unlock growth by making investing more accessible, more scalable, and ultimately more relevant.
In a market where choice is expanding rapidly, the defining differentiator will no longer be simply what you offer, but how easy investors can access it.
[1] ANBIMA, X-Ray of the Brazilian Investor 2025
[2] The Rio Times, Individual investors in Brazil boost portfolios to $1.3 trillion
[3] https://www2.calastone.com/globalautomationresearch2023
