Northern Trust has entered into a strategic alliance with BlackRock as part of its strategy to provide integrated products, services and technology across the entire investment lifecycle.
The partnership will enable both Northern Trust and BlackRock to deliver enhanced operations, data, and servicing capabilities to mutual clients.
These new capabilities will be delivered through Aladdin, BlackRock’s investment management and operations platform.
Northern Trust noted that this will provide clients with increased efficiency, interoperability and transparency across the back, middle and front office.
The relationship with BlackRock currently supports mutual clients and is an extension of Northern Trust Whole Office, an approach that integrates Northern Trust’s global asset servicing platform with innovative partners, facilitating client access to new technologies, services and solutions.
Through the integration, 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.
The alliance with BlackRock builds on a series of Northern Trust partnerships and strategic investments to provide solutions that span the investment lifecycle, including outsourced trade execution for asset managers and owners, and a digital and service platform for global asset allocators.
It also includes currency management and foreign exchange algorithmic trading, integration with industry trading platforms, collateral optimisation, risk analytics and digital innovation for asset servicing.
Pete Cherecwich, president of corporate and institutional services at Northern Trust, said: “We are following a very clear strategic pathway. We will continue to enhance our capabilities and add future functionality through a combination of buy, build or partner with best-in-class providers to benefit our global asset manager and asset owner clients.”
Cherecwich continued: “Whole office is about serving our clients’ needs across the entire investment lifecycle. We are offering a best of all worlds proposition: we don’t need to own every underlying technology or capability. We embrace the integration of partner technology solutions and services with Northern Trust’s proprietary infrastructure to help our clients drive their businesses and ultimately optimise performance.”
Rob Goldstein, BlackRock's COO and head of BlackRock Solutions, commented: “The current climate has once again demonstrated the importance of data symmetry and streamlining communication across the investment lifecycle from the asset manager to the asset servicer.”
Goldstein added: “BlackRock and Northern Trust are committed to providing increased transparency, accuracy and operating model flexibility for our mutual clients, leveraging our joint capabilities through Aladdin Provider.”
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