Custody banks

Let others debate the meaning of the Fearless Girl statue. To State Street's Hannah Grove, its message to the banking industry was simple: create a more welcoming workplace for all.

Hannah Grove has made it her mission to "eradicate jargon" at State Street, in an effort to make the company more acceible to its customers and easier for the public to trust.

Advancements aimed at speeding the flow of information by eliminating manual processing are helping the global custody bank attract new clients and win more business from existing ones, fueling revenue growth and improving efficiency.

Clearing services, assets under custody and administration and other parts of the trust bank's operations rose in the second quarter, all good news as it shifts leadership from Gerald Hassell to former Visa CEO Charlie Scharf.

Second-quarter profit improved modestly at Northern Trust as severance costs offset growth in trust and institutional services.

Why choose a former Visa chief to run a custody bank? Because to survive long term, Bank of New York Mellon will have to look more and more like a payments company.

Former Mellon Financial CEO Frank Cahouet is credited with leading the Pittsburgh company out of a difficult financial period. He was also CEO when Mellon acquired the mutual fund manager Dreyfus, and he rejected Bank of New York’s early attempts to buy Mellon.