Global custodian Northern trust is to implement Invest One, the flagship accounting engine from SunGard Investment Management Systems, as the technological foundation for its entry into the UK fund accounting business, and European expansion more broadly.
The move into the UK fund accounting market comes on the back of solid growth in the firm's European Global Fund Services (GFS) business says Jeremy Hester, head of Northern Trust's European GFS business development.
"As a result of our recent success with the investment manager community, these clients are now looking to us to provide additional services," he explains. "We already have a strong fund accounting pipeline from existing and prospective clients."
The selection of SunGard's Invest One system sits squarely with Northern Trust's preference to operate from a single global platform, as the accounting engine is already fully integrated with the firm's custody system.
As part of its formal entry into the UK market, Northern Trust is supplementing its technology investment by hiring local product specialists, including Gary Hewitt, who joined earlier this year after spending the previous five years at The Bank of New York, where he worked as a project manager within the fund accounting department working on new client transitions and unit trust to OEIC conversion projects. He will be joined by Sarah Noone, recruited from Smith and Williamson where her responsibilities included the day to day management of the fund accounting function for a range of 40 schemes, and the management of new fund set-ups and scheme reconstruction.