Northern Trust Corp. has begun using the financial product markup language to provide straight-through processing to its clients for over-the-counter derivative trades.
The Chicago company said Friday that it is using the FpML messaging format for its first client, which it described as a "high-profile investment manager."
Northern Trust said it is one of the first asset servicers to adopt the format, one of a family of variants from the extensible markup language designed to help different computer systems identify data elements in a file.
"We are investing for the long term in both people and technology in this area of our business and are actively pursuing ways to reduce manual processing and facilitate STP," Stephen Andress, the global head of derivatives processing at Northern Trust, said in a press release.
The International Swaps and Derivatives Association Inc., a New York trade group, has championed the format.
