Northern Trust and Saphyre Enhance Onboarding for Investment Operations Outsourcing Clients

Northern Trust (Nasdaq: NTRS) and Saphyre have deployed into production automation of the account opening process for investment manager clients of Northern Trust’s Investment Operations Outsourcing (IOO) business. The two firms collaborated on this innovative solution, which provides a dynamic middle-office function to increase transparency and efficiency for events including account setup, account maintenance and asset transfer requests.

Leveraging Saphyre’s patented AI technology to streamline operational support from pre-trade through post-trade is in line with Northern Trust’s Whole Office strategy, which integrates proprietary architecture with innovative companies. As enhancements are made over the next year, Northern Trust will schedule a planned rollout to all its Investment Operations clients.

Saphyre’s platform allows data to be entered once for simultaneous access by custodians, investment managers, asset owners and middle office teams supporting these accounts. The centralized data repository for all counterparties can reduce the potential for errors while shortening the lead time required to transition, open, and maintain accounts.

“The Saphyre ecosystem enables best practices and standardized communications across market participants, providing the surest path to increased straight-through processing, reduced exceptions, and cost savings,” said John Desmond, Head of Investment Operations Outsourcing, U.S. at Northern Trust. “Through our collaborative relationship, Saphyre has developed a middle office function that automates data sharing and communication between counterparties while enhancing the end-client’s experience.”

Gabino Roche, CEO and Founder at Saphyre, said: “This is a revolutionary development for the industry. Northern Trust is the first to seize this unprecedented opportunity in the middle-office function, with far reaching, positive impacts for post-trade. Investment managers using Saphyre’s solutions reduce emails and manual data entry by more than 75%, thanks to our patented technology that allows for greater accuracy. As a fintech company leading innovation in automated intelligence, we are excited to launch this new service for Northern Trust clients, which can simplify the new account opening and maintenance processes for asset owners and investment managers across the world.”

Northern Trust’s Global Fund Services business provides services including fund administration, global custody, investment operations outsourcing and capital market revenue enhancement solutions to global investment managers – supporting a range of complex investment strategies across the full spectrum of asset classes.

About Saphyre
Saphyre leverages patented AI technology to digitize all pre-trade data and activities across multiple counterparties: from asset owners to investment managers, hedge funds to prime brokers, any client firms to broker-dealers and custodians, and much more. Saphyre’s platform maintains memory of data and documents, resulting in clients not having to search or resubmit information, and expedites flow in a digitally structured manner so that it can be consumed and understood by any permissioned counterparty in the finance industry. This allows firms not only to assess risk faster but they can speed their onboarding processes, get real-time ready-to-trade statuses per account, and eliminate 70%-75% of redundant or inefficient post-trade activities.