Northern Trust has added financial technology provider SunGard’s Asset Arena Control Center (AACC) to the portfolio of products used by the custodian bank for automating back-office processes, according to a statement.
AACC will “help Northern Trust benefit from further operational efficiency by converting complex work processes into electronic checklists and easy-to-read dashboards that help increase automation and improve operational oversight of the firm’s fund accounting and investor accounting activities,” according to the statement.
AACC joins a range of other SunGard products currently in use at Northern Trust, which span the firm’s wealth management, asset management, private equity, capital markets, risk and analytics, and reconciliations systems.
Peter Cherecwich, head of global fund services at Northern Trust’s corporate and institutional services unit, says in a statement that AACC will help his firm increase operational efficiency, reduce operational risk and “ultimately help us generate significant cost savings.”
Denise Valentine, a senior analyst at market research firm Aite Group, says in a statement that Northern Trust’s adoption of AACC mirrors a broader trend toward operational automation and consolidation in the increasingly globalized investment management industry.
“To better manage their growing cross-border challenges, and minimize the risk of untimely, inaccurate processes, asset managers are seeking greater support for their day-to-day operations. This gives fund administrators the opportunity to increase their own scale and take on a greater range of services, as a one-stop shop for fund administration,” Valentine says. “By providing automation and transparency across areas such as client reporting, financial statement production and even middle-office and risk management responsibilities, a fund administrator is better able to compete in an operationally demanding yet cost-conscious market.”
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