Northern Trust partners with IHS Markit as part of Whole Office Strategy

By Pavithra R

Northern Trust, as part of its continuing strategy to serve client needs across the entire investment lifecycle, has partnered with IHS Markit, provider of the thinkFolio multi-asset class investment management platform. The partnership is considered a further significant milestone in Northern Trust’s drive to streamline investment operations for asset managers and asset owners. 

The integration between thinkFolio and Northern Trust’s middle office outsourcing platform is expected to provide opportunities for both the firms to offer mutual institutional clients innovative solutions and services leveraging each other’s strengths across the investment value chain.

“We have a long-standing relationship with thinkFolio and are excited to be working with them as we continue our drive to offer clients flexibility, scalability and best-in-class solution optionality across our Whole Office ecosystem. Our collaboration and technology integration with a number of leading front office platforms is key to driving operational efficiencies for our clients, minimizing implementation costs, reducing operational costs, increasing speed to market – and ultimately positively impacts their bottom line, helping them to optimize performance,” said Pete Cherecwich, president of Corporate & Institutional Services at Northern Trust.

The integration will provide a fully-integrated, end-to-end process that streamlines workflows and mitigates clients’ operational costs. The alliance continues to build on advanced technology solutions and interoperable architecture that the respective companies have implemented for asset manager & asset owner clients. 

Clients will benefit from an innovative service model with support for tactical and strategic operational and technology needs. thinkFolio clients leveraging the IHS Markit managed service hosted on the AWS cloud will also benefit from a seamless technology and service experience, focused on multi-asset class transaction capture, enhanced position data synchronization and reconciliation.

“The theme of front-to-back solutions continues to be prominent as institutional investors are asking their middle and back office counterparties for increased control, transparency and workflow efficiency across the post-trade segments of the securities transaction lifecycle. We are advocates for Northern Trust’s Whole Office open architecture and interoperable ethos and look forward to matching thinkFolio’s cross-asset class strength, flexibility and managed service with the strength of Northern Trust’s middle office solutions to deliver further operational alpha for our clients,” said Brett Schechterman, managing director and global head of thinkFolio at IHS Markit.

Founded in Chicago in 1889, Northern Trust Corporation is a provider of wealth management, asset management, asset servicing, and banking to corporations, institutions, affluent families and individuals. It has a global presence with offices in 22 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., and across 22 locations in Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region.