As part of its continuing strategy to serve client needs across the entire investment lifecycle, Northern Trust has entered into an alliance with IHS Markit, provider of the thinkFolio multi-asset class investment management platform, achieving a further significant milestone in its drive to streamline investment operations for asset managers and asset owners. 

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

Bringing together thinkFolio with Northern Trust’s middle office technology, services and expertise will provide a fully-integrated, end-to-end process that streamlines workflows and mitigates clients’ operational costs.  The collaboration continues to build on advanced technology solutions and interoperable architecture that the respective companies have implemented for asset manager and asset owner clients.   Clients will benefit from an innovative service model with experts from both Northern Trust and IHS Markit supporting their tactical and strategic operational and technology needs.

As part of the managed service delivery of thinkFolio, IHS Markit manages upgrades and real-time feeds and executes overnight data loads and start-of-day processes.  Through this ongoing collaboration with Northern Trust, thinkFolio clients leveraging the IHS Markit managed service hosted on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud will benefit from a seamless technology and service experience, which is focused on multi-asset class transaction capture, enhanced position data synchronization and reconciliation.

“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,” said Pete Cherecwich, president of Corporate & Institutional Services at Northern Trust. “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.”

“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,” said Brett Schechterman, managing director and global head of thinkFolio at IHS Markit. “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.”

Northern Trust Whole Office™ is an advanced open architecture, multi-asset class solution serving diverse market participants including asset managers, asset owners, investors and third party administrators. By integrating proprietary architecture with innovative partners, Northern Trust Whole Office facilitates client access to new technologies and capabilities across the spectrum of Strategy and Trading, Operational, Data and Digital and Analytics solutions.