A conversation with Northern Trust on its quest to bring industry leading asset servicing solutions to its customers; and its partnership with TCS BaNCS  

I'm Kevin Blair.  

I'm the Director of Securities Services Strategy at Northern Trust. 

So, Northern Trust is on a modernization journey 

And that modernization journey I'm not necessarily sure has an ending.  

It's a continual move forward. 

It’s like how do we constantly respond to not only new challenges, but also new opportunities that are in the market with the latest technology etc.  

They know that they need to get to a T0. That’s where the industry is going to get us to, creating enough standardization in the process, enough interoperability between all the participants in the settlements value chain, if we can sort of get that in place, then you can actually move to a quick settlement process.  

Fortunately, we had already moved across to TCS banks who had already anticipated and made the relevant configuration changes within the system for us to simply already take advantage of the automation that was in there.  

So, our focus is working on an infrastructure that creates scalability in order to then meet the new needs of the markets, of the client base, and not have to do a huge overhaul of the system again.  

How do we change our systems?  

How do we change our operating model in order to succeed in achieving that outcome? 

Whether it's a regulatory change or market change or an industry change in there, there is A partner that's going to get us there.  

Some of that is going to be we will continue to build ourselves. Some of that we will be partnering with the likes of TCS Banks who are on that same journey as well, and is working across the industry in order to achieve the same goals and the same aspirations that North Trust does.