AFTAs 2021: Most cutting-edge IT initiative—Northern Trust
OVERVIEW
Alternative assets such as private capital or hedge funds are mostly unregulated and no industry standard exists for processing the data that is generated when clients invest in these assets.
Northern Trust processes millions of unstructured documents yearly from multiple sources and in multiple formats, whether they are in web-based portals, faxes or emails. With the continued growth of alternative investing, this entails time-consuming manual input with little operational efficiency. With higher volume, timeliness and accuracy also become a challenge.
THE SOLUTION
NT Digitizer is a machine-learning framework and workflow tool that extracts unstructured alternative investment data from multiple sources and integrates it into existing workstreams. It can be configured for multiple asset types and systems.
Using Microsoft Azure cognitive services, the tool extracts processing data from unstructured documents. It then transforms crucial information such as capital call notices, cash and stock distribution notices, and capital account statements from a variety of unstructured formats into a digitized format for operations teams. This allows Northern Trust to provide an end-to-end, scalable, cloud-based process capable of moving from document receipt notification to digitized, accounting-ready data in minutes.
Features include supervised learning with manually labeled data for complicated documents, customizable data extraction, and mandatory/optional data specification.
“The NT Digitizer enables the integration of unstructured data for alternative assets, which fills a crucial missing piece for asset owners who have long sought an accurate view of performance, liquidity and risk analytics across multi-asset portfolios. Automating investment data is a focus for Northern Trust, particularly for alternative assets due to their complexity and growing investor demand. Our investments in cloud technology, artificial intelligence, blockchain and machine learning will help asset owners achieve a true understanding of their assets and portfolios as a whole and for that reason, this initiative is truly cutting-edge.”
Pete Cherecwich, president of Corporate and Institutional Services, Northern Trust
WHAT’S TO COME
NT Digitizer will expand to support additional alternative documents and data points to support functions beyond back-office processing.
Northern Trust plans to extend its use beyond alternative asset services to benefit processing functions such as derivatives or cash operations.
The platform will be expanded to facilitate analytics for better client insights and provide a 360-degree view of client portfolios.
WHY THEY WON
NT Digitizer is an enterprise platform that applies robust, up-to-date tech—it’s built on Azure Cognitive Services with Rest APIs and client library software development kits—to a perennial challenge experienced by Northern Trust’s clients. Automating document digitization will save customers in alternatives time, money and effort, and will relieve them of tedious tasks.
Only users who have a paid subscription or are part of a corporate subscription are able to print or copy content.
To access these options, along with all other subscription benefits, please contact info@waterstechnology.com or view our subscription options here: https://subscriptions.waterstechnology.com/subscribe
You are currently unable to print this content. Please contact info@waterstechnology.com to find out more.
You are currently unable to copy this content. Please contact info@waterstechnology.com to find out more.
Copyright Infopro Digital Limited. All rights reserved.
As outlined in our terms and conditions, https://www.infopro-digital.com/terms-and-conditions/subscriptions/ (point 2.4), printing is limited to a single copy.
If you would like to purchase additional rights please email info@waterstechnology.com
Copyright Infopro Digital Limited. All rights reserved.
You may share this content using our article tools. As outlined in our terms and conditions, https://www.infopro-digital.com/terms-and-conditions/subscriptions/ (clause 2.4), an Authorised User may only make one copy of the materials for their own personal use. You must also comply with the restrictions in clause 2.5.
If you would like to purchase additional rights please email info@waterstechnology.com
More on Awards & Rankings
Waters Rankings 2025: All the winners and why they won
WatersTechnology readers voted to determine the winners in 35 technology and data categories comprising this year’s virtual Waters Rankings.
Waters Rankings 2025: Best corporate actions solution provider—SIX
Name of product or service: Global Corporate Actions
Waters Rankings 2025: Best enterprise data management (EDM) system provider—Finbourne Technology
Name of product or service: EDM+ (Enterprise Data Management+)
Waters Rankings 2025: Best credit risk solution provider—Moody’s
Name of product or service: Moody’s CreditView with Research Assistant
Waters Rankings 2025: Best portfolio management system provider—RiskVal Financial Solutions
Name of product or service: RVPortfolio
Waters Rankings 2025: Best reporting system provider—Regnology
Name of product or service: Regnology platform
Waters Rankings 2025: Best data analytics provider—JP Morgan
Name of product or service: Fusion by JP Morgan
Waters Rankings 2025: Best market risk solution provider—Numerix
Name of product or service: Oneview for Market Risk