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Northern Trust (NTRS) Inks Strategic Alliance With IHS Markit

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Northern Trust (NTRS - Free Report) has entered into a strategic agreement with IHS Markit Ltd. , per which, both the firms will be able to offer mutual institutional clients innovative solutions and services. IHS Markit is provider of the thinkFolio multi-asset class investment management platform.

The move forms part of Northern Trust’s efforts to streamline investment operations for asset managers and asset owners.

The alliance between thinkFolio and Northern Trust’s middle office outsourcing platform is expected to provide a fully-integrated, end-to-end process that streamlines workflows and mitigates clients’ operational costs.

Also, the company informed that as a result of this collaboration, thinkFolio clients leveraging the IHS Markit managed service hosted on the Amazon Web Services cloud will be able to gain from the service focused on multi-asset class transaction capture, enhanced position data synchronization and reconciliation.

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

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

Our Take

Northern Trust has been continuously trying to enhance digital offerings in order to meet the changing consumer demand, especially amid the pandemic. Also, its implementation of expense reduction initiatives and strategic additional efforts to improve productivity are anticipated to yield positive results. However, low interest rates environment poses a concern.

The stock has gained 16.8% in the past six months compared with the industry’s growth of 31.2%.

The stock presently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

With the growing demand for digital currencies, companies have been making investments to ensure their availability to clients. Last December, Goldman (GS - Free Report) was in the news for aiming to roll out the automated investment service, Marcus Invest, which is under trials with staff.

In October 2020, Bank of America (BAC - Free Report) launched its digital financial planning tool — Life Plan. Customers will be able to access the Life Plan program through the bank’s mobile app and website.

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