Consumers with trust funds and other manner of wealth management relationships crave safety, undivided professional attention and real-time 24/7 access to their accounts. Western National believes the “as a service” model will not only accomplish these goals, but do so at a lower cost of ownership and with a simpler infrastructure that frees up advisors to spend more time working with well heeled clients.
Northern Trust’s correspondent unit has been hired to provide a wealth management product in a SAS70 hosted environment for Western National Trust Company, which provides trust and wealth management services with locations in five states and clients ranging from $50 million to $20 billion in total trust assets. Western National, a Zions Bancorp subsidiary, has operated a trust accounting system in an in-house client server environment for the past 17 years. Fi-Tec, LLC, Northern Trust’s strategic development partner, will deliver the new trust functionality through the TrustPortal, an integrated service platform and one-stop internet entry point for accounting, investment management, performance reporting and other functions in a fully hosted environment.
“The outsourcing solution allows the client to take full advantage of the latest technology, which leads to improved processing speed,” said Walter Weisenburger, head of correspondent trust services at Northern Trust, in a written statement. “In addition, the deployment of enhancements is done through the host, which is a tremendous productivity gain for the IT department at the client offices.”
