Global Custodians Can Thank Regulators for Growth

Global custodian banks have been rocked by scandals in the past few years: State Street Corp. alone recently paid $382 million to settle allegations of fraudulent foreign exchange practices. Still, new regulations and requirements for asset managers have been a boon to the biggest players in the securities services business.

BNY Mellon, No. 1 in亚博赞助欧冠’s ranking of the World’s Largest Global Custodians for the eighth straight year, saw its assets under custody rise to an estimated $25.08 trillion. The New York–based bank’s new mandates for 2016 include a United Arab Emirates–based exchange-traded fund and a servicing deal with Nomura Asset Management Deutschland.

Paul Fahey，Northern Trust Corp.的保险资产服务负责人及其业务支持运行内部资产管理的机构投资者，总结了监管机构和监护人之间的关系。亚博赞助欧冠“监管仍然是最大的产品开发司机，”他说。“作为资产管理人员，资产所有者和保险公司已经提出了额外的要求，他们正在寻找他们的选择，包括外包，”加法利，其芝加哥的公司排名第六，保管下的资产6.35万亿美元。

监管机构直接和间接刺激对许多服务的需求。全球监护人同意，保险公司 - 在其固定收入组合的损失多年的收益率 - 更加开放，无法向其业务提供核心的背包和中间办公室服务。亚博赞助欧冠机构投资者继续施加对冲基金和私募股权公司投资其基础设施，这是推动替代管理人员认为像大保管人这样的外部提供者的趋势。

投资者are hesitant to put money with hedge funds and other smaller firms that haven’t spent big on recordkeeping and other systems and safeguards, such as defenses against cybercrime. At the same time, technological advancements have fueled growth for custodians by making it easier for managers and others to switch to an outside provider via true plug-and-play systems.

For custodians, providing services to manage, strategize, access and make sense of data is probably the most active area. Asset managers not only need to access the right information in real time for regulators scrutinizing their businesses; most also want to be able to make data-fueled decisions on everything from picking investments to promoting staff. They’re turning to custodians for help.

Fahey, who spent 15 years at Boston-based State Street (No. 2, with $21.35 trillion under custody) before joining Northern Trust six years ago, says the bank is building tools and helping clients to develop cost-effective strategies around data. Clients expect the data services they utilize at work to resemble the conveniences in their personal life, he explains, citing real-time UPS delivery tracking and his nine-year-old son’s class, which uses Google Docs to share writing assignments and offer instantaneous feedback. “If that’s the environment you’re living with daily, you’re bringing that expectation to the office,” Fahey notes. “People won’t tolerate that lack of access to data anymore.”

Michael Coleman, New York–based head of global custody and fund services product development at J.P. Morgan, says potential and present clients always evaluate custodians’ data services, which he describes as an area of growing competition among custodian banks. J.P. Morgan, the No. 3 firm in our ranking with $20.47 trillion in assets under custody, focuses on quality because clients rely on data for such critical activities. “If you’re doing fancy things with data, how do you know it’s right?” Coleman asks.

Earlier this year J.P. Morgan became the first client of BlackRock’s Provider Aladdin, a version of the New York–based asset management giant’s existing risk and portfolio management system designed for custodians. BlackRock is also one of J.P. Morgan’s largest clients. Coleman says Aladdin is part of the bank’s effort to offer an integrated data environment that brings together a client’s information from J.P. Morgan, outside asset managers and external operations providers. “This allows clients and providers to work off the same data sources in real time,” he observes.

J.P. Morgan Stabjectors正在桌面上使用Aladdin的屏幕。在J.P. Morgan的某人曾经呼叫Blackrock来分析差异的情况下，这两个方现在都可以同时在系统上看到它。呼叫这种安排“扩展企业”的科尔曼说它改变了供应商 - 客户关系的性质：“客户和他们的服务提供商之间的界限在哪里？”J.P. Morgan还开发了数据科学方法，在统计上检测资金的净资产值问题，并为保管客户创建机器学习工具。

Late last year Northern Trust and an outside provider released a survey of 201 asset management and insurance executives in the U.S. and the U.K. on data sourcing, management and strategy. Only 13 percent of respondents said they got full value from their data, while 54 percent listed “improving investment decisions” as a top-three goal for data strategy. Other reasons to get a better handle on data included managing risks, lowering costs, and improving internal and external reporting. Custodians are eager to fill these gaps.

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