Northern Trust announced the creation of a new group that merges its digital assets team and the division that supports innovations for traditional securities services markets. It will be led by 17-year Northern Trust veteran Justin Chapman who currently is global head of Market Advocacy Innovation and Research.
“Traditional and digital markets already co-exist and the boundaries between the two will only continue to blur over time,” said Chapman. “At the same time as more institutional investors are entering the digital arena, the rest of the securities industry is also facing an unprecedented amount of change arising from new regulation, market evolution and the development of emerging technology capabilities.” He believes the combined group can serve investors across all asset classes.
Northern Trust‘s $15 trillion of assets under custody and another $1 trillion under management rank the bank as the sixth largest global custodian. It’s third in terms of security servicing fees.
The company was a very early adopter of blockchain, developing a private equity fund administration platform in 2017, which was subsequently transferred to Broadridge.
Currently, it is a minority shareholder in Zodia, the UK-regulated digital asset custody platform founded by Standard Chartered. We recently reported that Zodia might be partnering with major Japanese digital asset firm SBI for custody.
As custodian, Northern Trust collaborated with Singapore startup Bondevalue to fractionalize bonds and is participating in a SWIFT pilot relating to tokenized assets.
