Northern Trust has slashed the time needed to onboard institutional clients by 83%, cutting the process from two-and-a-half weeks down to just three days, according to an announcement from the Chicago-based banking institution. The new AI-powered agent, developed in partnership with Microsoft Frontier Company, transforms years of data and transaction history into a standardized format ready for use in the bank's reporting environment. The tool represents one of the earliest deployments from Microsoft's $2.5 billion venture launched in July to help clients move from AI trials to full-scale implementation.
The agent consolidates large volumes of investment and transaction data from multiple sources to reconstruct performance histories for clients joining Northern Trust Asset Servicing's Front Office Solutions platform. It achieves over a 96% F1 first-pass quality score, an AI evaluation metric measuring the correctness and completeness of the data mappings it produces. The system was tested using only anonymized data to ensure client information remained securely governed throughout the process, allowing the partners to reach production-scale performance while meeting the stringent data stewardship requirements of the highly regulated financial services industry. Built on Microsoft Azure, the agent uses Microsoft Foundry for enterprise AI and integrates with Microsoft 365 tools including Excel and SharePoint.
"Onboarding a large institutional client can involve an enormous amount of data, particularly in alternative investments," says Northern Trust COO Pete Cherecwich. "You might have years of transaction history and cash flows across multiple investments, and the data can come to us in all kinds of different formats." Until now, the bank had to map and transform that data manually before loading it into its environment, Cherecwich explains. "The agent does a lot of the heavy lifting, and then our people review the output and handle the things where there's uncertainty," he adds, noting that the approach lets the technology handle what it does well while people apply their expertise where it matters.
The collaboration succeeded because it brought together Northern Trust's deep knowledge of asset servicing with Microsoft's AI and underlying technology expertise, according to Cherecwich. Microsoft Frontier Company organized itself to serve customers at the speed and scale they want, bringing together not only hands-on engineering teams but also industry experts and team members with expertise in change management and process optimization, says Bill Borden, CVP at Worldwide Financial Services for Microsoft. The venture studied Microsoft's internal AI transformation to inform how it supports clients. Having Microsoft's engineers embedded with Northern Trust's people and expertise allowed the partners to move much faster, Cherecwich notes, adding that neither side could have built as good a solution independently.
When evaluating return on investment, Cherecwich looks beyond a single number to consider speed to revenue, the client experience, and transforming a very manual process into something more efficient. The technology allows the bank's employees to spend less time moving data around and more time working with clients, he says. Azure provides a governed intelligence layer to preserve approved onboarding knowledge to support continuous improvement of the onboarding process. The partners say their "eyes off" approach to client data has allowed them to meet financial services' strict regulatory requirements while achieving production-scale performance. Banks willing to embed external engineering talent alongside their own teams may unlock faster paths to deployment, though the model demands a level of operational transparency that not all institutions can sustain. The real test will be whether competitors can replicate this collaboration model or whether Northern Trust's early move creates a lasting advantage in client acquisition speed.