Northern Trust unveils Digital document capture to digitize alternative asset servicing

By Pavithra R

Northern Trust has announced the launch of a machine learning powered document capture capability as the foundation of a multi-year investment to digitize alternative asset servicing and enhance the experience for asset owner clients that invest in the complex private market and unlisted assets.

Digital document capture enables Northern Trust to streamline historically manual workflows by automating the receipt and processing of alternative asset documents and fund manager reports on holdings and performance of private equity, hedge funds, and other alternative assets. The proprietary solution combines robotic process automation and cloud-based technology to provide transparency and data standardization that enables an increased understanding of portfolio risk and performance.

“As alternative asset classes continue to grow in importance to institutional investors, Northern Trust is committed to driving efficiency and reducing operational risk through the use of emerging technologies. Digital document capture is a huge step forward, and only the start of our larger plan to enhance alternative asset servicing for the benefit of our clients,” said Pete Cherecwich, President of Corporate & Institutional Services at Northern Trust.

Northern Trust has more than US$1.6 tn in alternative assets under custody and administration and processes more than 1.5 mn alternative asset documents each year. The intelligent document capture solution deploys custom built robotic process automation that enables self-service operations to collect documents from emails. Documents are stored on a cloud-based drive where intelligent tools extract identifying details such as the type of document and the name of the fund company, tasks previously performed manually.

The proprietary document capture tool is the first in a series of releases supporting Northern Trust’s strategy to harness emerging technologies to digitize alternative asset servicing, a growing sector of its asset servicing business. Automated document capture enables Northern Trust’s alternative asset servicing teams to focus on more strategic aspects of the process and reduces the need for manual intervention when coordinating saving, storage and categorization.

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.