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Northern Trust and Microsoft deploy AI agent to speed client onboarding data prep

For the chief operating officer at an asset-servicing bank

Northern Trust and Microsoft announced on Nov. 9 an expanded collaboration that begins with a new AI-powered client onboarding agent for clients on Northern Trust Asset Servicing's Front Office Solutions platform, according to a joint press release from Chicago and Redmond, Wash.1

The agent converts clients' historical transaction data into Northern Trust's standardized format, which the release calls one of the most complex parts of institutional onboarding.1 Northern Trust and Microsoft Frontier Company Forward Deployed Engineering teams developed it jointly, and the release says onboarding can require consolidating large volumes of data from multiple sources, particularly for alternative assets.1

The companies said the agent cut data preparation time by 83%, from two and a half weeks to three days, measured on real client onboarding scenarios after deployment; the measure included data transformation, analyst review, exception handling and final validation.1

The agent scored 96.5% on F1 first-pass quality, according to the release's footnotes, in controlled testing across seven representative test cases using anonymized historical client transaction workbooks, with outputs compared against analyst-prepared reference outputs.1

Analysts use the agent during implementation, before a client goes live, to review outputs, resolve exceptions and reconcile errors, and they review and approve its work in Microsoft Excel and SharePoint; the agent is built on Microsoft Azure and uses Microsoft Foundry.1

Microsoft tuned the agent on F1 scoring and other evaluation measures using only anonymized data in an "eyes-off" approach, so Northern Trust client data stayed under the firm's control, the release said.1

Why it matters

Both firms present the result as a repeatable model for regulated institutions: vendor engineers build against anonymized data while the bank keeps its client data, with analysts still checking output before go-live. The 96.5% score came from seven test cases, so banks weighing similar projects should ask for their own test volumes and error-review costs.

From the brief

Our take. Northern Trust now prepares a new client's transaction history in three days, not two and a half weeks. Clients will quote that in your next onboarding pitch, and matching it may mean Microsoft engineers inside your build.

Action. Asset-servicing operations: Measure current days from signed mandate to clean historical data load, against Northern Trust's three-day benchmark.

From our records

Sources

  1. Primary sourceNorthern Trust and Microsoft Frontier Company collaborate to transform client onboarding through AI - Source Microsoft
  2. Primary sourcehttps://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365 Microsoft