Z/Yen has just completed an assignment for six investment banks to interview 30 of their key clients (fund managers) on the operational performance levels expected. Somewhat surprisingly, in these days of much higher focus on back-office operations, two thirds of the fund managers said that they had suspended trading with individual brokers because of poor operational performance. It also seems that IT is not the answer, with only one fund manager placing high importance on availability of banks' systems over the Internet. Z/Yen presented the findings of the survey to the fund management community on 27 March.