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done is take a group of fund accountants out of business units and put them in this new environment. Every day they are working on their funds, but we’ve teamed them up with Scrum Masters and experts in Agile and Blue Prism (the robotics side) so all day and every day while they are working they are also evaluating their processes and why they are doing what they are doing.”


Houlihan says that the Agile teams work in tranches of three weeks and this way they gauge efficiency gains is how many more funds they can put into that lab with the same headcount. Northern Trust has been rolling this process out now for about eight months and has achieved quite considerable efficiency gains, it says. Houlihan says: “And what is surprising is that most of the efficiency gains aren’t even from the robotics – it’s because one big group of people is sitting at the same table and the accountability matrix has changed – they are sitting across from the very people they are dependent upon for data or information to let them take the next step in the process but also because getting the job done on time has become table stakes. The fun of it has been in measuring the efficiency, building the robots and breaking new ground. So, the engagement levels have been turned up a number of notches by the dynamics of the lab. So, I’ve been pleased to see the human impact in addition to the robotics.”





“The days when we can sit someone down at a desk or in a cube and they will be happy to work there for five years are probably


Just because someone has a senior title does not mean that they have the best ideas


long gone. The new generation entering the workforce has different habits and we cannot force our own ways of working on them – they would just leave. We now need to give our staff a new toolkit which is going to inspire them and help them to stay motivated and creative into the future. The fund accountant of the future will have to have skillsets that we just weren’t looking for until recently – we need to know how intellectually flexible are they, how intellectually motivated are they and what their technology competencies are and the other side of the coin is


that we need to handle people who are coming in to the banking environment properly.


“Just because someone is senior or has a senior title does not mean that they automatically have all the best ideas. New people coming in have experience of artificial intelligence, robotics digitisation and a whole host of other subjects others don’t know. We need to make them feel part of the team and that they have valuable insights to give. Not only do they have a seat at the table but their insights are valuable from the bank’s strategy standpoint.”


Houlihan says: “We are seeing rapid growth in the hedge fund side and big growth in the middle-office outsourcing side. Private equity asset management is also growing.”


Northern Trust announced a plan to cut $250 million in costs by 2020 earlier this year and it is hoped that all of the initiatives


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