Northern Trust Unveils Online Form PF Solution

Peter Sanchez, chief executive officer of Northern Trust Hedge Fund Services, tells BST that with this offering they were looking to add guidance around the lack of clarity in some of the instructions and questions within the form.

"We tried to do that in three ways," he says. "One was getting them some insight in how we believe the norms of the larger funds answered the questions so that they had an idea of what their approaches were."

The second measure was embedding Northern Trust's data aggregation tools to provide not only aggregating capabilities, but tagging capabilities as well. "Those tools allow them to answer the questions in the most robust way with the data available, rather than having to use some third party to aggregate that data," Sanchez says.

Finally, the platform allows users access to calculations that are needed to provide answers to questions throughout the form.

As a fund administrator, Sanchez says it makes sense for Northern Trust to handle the compilation of this data because it already has access to the fund's book of record, and they use one data set across the enterprise.

"Data aggregation is a huge requirement and given that the administrator has the complete book of record for the client and manager, they're in the best position to do so," he says. "It helps if you use one data set across your trade capture, P&L, fund accounting and investor accounting, as well as your risk and compliance reporting─which we do."

For tagging, because they use one data set, the system can allow for more specific answers to questions on the form.

"Both of those components─data aggregation and tagging─are core differentiators of our system and have put us in a good position to address the needs of our clients," Sanchez says.

Sanchez adds that they will leverage the platform's capabilities for core risk questions for Form CPO-PQR for commodity pool operators and for Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) reporting.