Northern Trust Rolls Out Suite of Minority Brokerage Reports

According to the  announcement , regulatory and legislative mandates increasingly require U.S. public entities to source a portion of their activities to designated minority-owned firms. The new reporting templates will, according to Northern Trust, allow plan sponsors to view data aggregated across multiple investment managers, thus improving their ability to identify the total portion of the fund’s trading activity that is executed using minority and women owned firms.

“As a custodian, we seek to provide innovative tools to assist our institutional clients in meeting the growing number of complex regulatory and compliance requirements,” said Peter Cherecwich, Northern Trust’s global head of asset servicing product management. “These new reports creatively combine traditional custodial trade data with minority sourcing information in a way that demonstrates Northern Trust’s commitment to enriching the value of reporting through Passport, our online data delivery platform.”

Classification Data

An important component of this new service offering is the quality and breadth of the data used to independently classify minority brokerage firms. Northern Trust has engaged CVM, Inc., a minority-owned business sourcing firm, to collect and provide minority-owned classification information from approximately 300 certification sources across the United States. Northern Trust’s reports utilize information provided by CVM, Inc. to reflect the extent to which investment managers have sourced trade execution to minority firms, the ethnic makeup of each firm’s ownership, and the agencies that have certified the firm’s status.

“Utilizing a minority-owned firm like CVM, Inc. to provide our clients with innovative reporting solutions demonstrates Northern Trust’s commitment not only to our clients but also to the inclusion of diverse businesses in an increasingly diverse marketplace,” said Deidra Jenkins, Northern Trust’s Director of Supplier Diversity.