Northern Trust Enters Strategic Alliance with BlackRock

New capabilities offer clients increased efficiency, interoperability, and transparency across the back, middle and front office

Northern Trust announced today that, as part of its continuing strategy to provide integrated products, services, and technology across the entire investment lifecycle, it has entered into a strategic alliance with BlackRock.

The move aims to deliver enhanced operations, data, and servicing capabilities to mutual clients, according to Northern Trust.

The new capabilities, delivered through Aladdin®, BlackRock’s investment management and operations platform, 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, the firm stated.

Whole Office ecosystem

“Our Whole Office ecosystem delivers global asset owners and asset managers scale, efficiency, flexibility and optionality, ultimately enabling more informed investment decision making,” said Pete Cherecwich, president of corporate and institutional services at Northern Trust.

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“We have a long-standing relationship with BlackRock and are excited to be working with them as part of our Whole Office strategy. The alliance connects Northern Trust’s fund accounting, fund administration, asset servicing, and middle office capabilities to BlackRock’s Aladdin platform, creating greater connectivity between asset manager and asset servicer,” he added.

“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,” said Rob Goldstein, BlackRock’s chief operating officer and head of BlackRock Solutions. “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.”

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.

They also include currency management, FX algorithmic trading, and integration with industry trading platforms, as well as collateral optimization, risk analytics, and digital innovation for asset servicing.

Cherecwich noted that the firm is 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,” he said.