Northern Trust has entered into an agreement with Finscape to provide clients with a comprehensive view of their fund distribution activity. By streamlining market intelligence gathering, the service – also called Finscape – aims to help address industry-wide challenges around data transparency. Under the agreement, Northern Trust will make Finscape available to its asset manager clients globally, allowing them to carry out forensic analysis of distribution, providing them with access to valuable information to inform their sales strategy and help them to meet regulatory requirements.
Finscape also addresses the challenge for asset managers of identifying investors in their funds where sales are made via a third-party fund distribution platform. Finscape’s solution pools information from distribution platforms, asset managers and granular adviser data available from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority. The resulting data is constantly reconciled and enriched by Finscape’s proprietary business rules, forming a comprehensive picture of the market and allowing contributors to analyse their own flows compared to an aggregate view of their sector.