Northern Trust Expands Reporting Toolset

New reports launched in 2008 will help clients comply with higher standards for transparency in class action processing, taxation, investment risks and accounting practices, according to a press release.

“As Northern Trust enters new markets around the globe, we continue to develop products to meet the local and regulatory needs of our worldwide client base,” said Peter Cherecwich, Northern Trust’s global head of asset servicing product development. “Corporations, public pension funds and not- for-profit institutions face increasingly complex challenges in managing governance, regulatory, accounting, investing, finance and fiduciary responsibilities. As global custodian, Northern Trust seeks to ease our clients’ burden of achieving transparency while complying with all accounting, valuation and financial reporting standards.”

Reporting Enhancements

Governance, regulatory and financial reporting requirements addressed by Northern Trust include:

• Northern Trust has introduced eight reporting templates that organize data by class action event and represent the status of the entire class action court settlement to improve the efficiency of clients’ governance reviews.
• Northern Trust has created a suite of reports to help clients gather information for the GASB 50 reporting that is required as of June 30, 2008. The new reports provide detail on fair-value reporting of investments that are not based on quoted market prices, as well as the funded status of defined benefit pension plans.
• Dutch Regulatory Reporting — Pension funds in The Netherlands are required to produce quarterly and annual regulatory reports. Northern Trust has enhanced quarterly reporting to include “shock testing” on derivatives to gauge the potential impact of extreme market events.   Shock-tested data is also produced on all holdings for the annual reports.

Clients’ reports are available to them through the firm’s client Web portal, Northern Trust Passport.