Northern Trust Enhances Investment Analysis Tools

Northern Trust has enhanced the investment analysis module of its Front Office Solutions platform to optimise decision-making for institutional investors managing sophisticated portfolios, including alternative investments.

The bank says the enhancements to the web-based tool address complex asset allocators’ needs for a unified capability to support their investment strategy through increased data capacity, faster speed and greater flexibility and visualization for custom reporting.

“Multi-asset class investors have complex investments that require resources and time to evaluate and monitor,” says John Turney, head of Northern Trust Front Office Solutions. “Our investment analysis tool provides allocators with a holistic view of their portfolios, across both liquid and alternative asset classes, delivering advanced data analytics that allow them to focus on due diligence to support their investment strategies.”

The tool allows allocators to conduct data analysis across current, prospective and historical investments, giving them the ability to monitor and assess their investments through interactive charts and templates, removing the administrative steps that are often required to set up, maintain and re-run reports. Additionally, it provides customisation capabilities, such as the ability to combine multiple analyses into a single view.

Built using human-centred design, the bank says the tool is highly visual and provides allocators with enhanced perspective to evaluate their highly complex investments. Key features include the ability to conduct correlation analyses with interactive heat-maps and run returns analyses with drawdown charts.

“How a portfolio should be invested to gain the best chance of achieving its objectives is a critical question that investors should ask to meet their long-terms goals,” says Peter Todd, senior quantitative developer for Front Office Solutions. “With the uncertainty of investment outcomes, measuring risk is necessary in determining effectiveness. By harnessing expanded views and visual outputs, our newest release allows users to more easily meet the increasing demands to derive insightful conclusions.”