Northern Trust has partnered with data management automation specialist Confluence to deliver financial and regulatory reporting solutions for Northern Trust’s European asset manager clients.
Together the organisations are leveraging data technology to streamline how financial documentation is prepared and delivered for fund disclosures – reducing time spent on manual tasks and driving efficiencies to help clients meet reporting obligations in a timely and accurate manner.
Those responsible for investment funds – including asset managers, investors, directors and regulators – must produce a wide range of financial statements and regulatory reports as part of their disclosure obligations.
Todd Moyer (pictured), president and COO at Confluence, says: “Producing these reports can often be inefficient and time-consuming – involving highly-manual calculations and publishing processes. At the same time, the growing scope of international regulation and heightened scrutiny on the investment industry in recent years has made these tasks more complex and resource intensive.
“We are excited at Confluence about the partnership and work that we have been doing with Northern Trust to help support more streamlined financial documentation for funds. This is the start of a strong partnership and we look forward to working with Northern Trust to deliver first-class products and services.”
To drive efficiencies across these areas, Northern Trust is using Confluence’s Unity Financial Reporting to automate the creation of statements and holdings reports. The solution automates much of the process involved to build these documents – reducing the time it typically takes to prepare first drafts, while the use of standardised templates helps ensure consistency of reporting style.
Simultaneously, Northern Trust is drawing on Confluence’s Unity NXT Regulatory Reporting platform to automate the sourcing and aggregation of data for clients’ regulatory reporting. Interfacing with Confluence’s platform, client data held by Northern Trust is matched with international templates and rules to meet the specifications of international regulators.
Clive Bellows, head of Global Fund Services, Europe, Middle East and Africa at Northern Trust, says: “Northern Trust is committed to creating greater efficiencies for clients in how their reporting is prepared and delivered, to the specifications required by regulators. Partnering with Confluence helps us deliver on that objective – automating inefficient reporting practices, improving accuracy and creating high-quality documentation to support our clients’ diverse fund offerings and investment strategies.”