BNY Mellon to Offer Custodial Data via BlackRock's Aladdin

BNY Mellon will start to offer its custodial data and accounting tools on BlackRock’s investment management platform Aladdin, the two firms announced on April 3, marking the first time that the pair have collaborated to such an extent on a project.

Common clients will be able to access BNY Mellon’s data, tools, and services through Aladdin’s portal. Customers will have near-real-time trade lifecycle information, data insights, and exception-based monitoring into custody oversight and be able to access this all through one portal with shared workflows.

Christine Gill, head of investment manager services at BNY, says the goal of the partnership is to increase the value for shared clients.

“We want to improve the client experience and increase the value we give to them so we look to offer them different access points for tools,” Gill says. “We don’t want to provide tools for every technology need of our client but rather leverage the tools they already have to support their execution. We don’t want to have a monolithic solution so we have an open architecture strategy to provide our information to other desktops.”

BlackRock was unable to make an executive available for comment, but spokespeople did confirm that this is the first time the company has allowed an external tool to be integrated into Aladdin.

Beginning by offering access to BNY Mellon’s custody and accounting information, the integration will eventually expand into providing information spread across its transfer agency, sub-accounting products, and intermediary analytics business. This lets users access custody data through Aladdin without needing to call up their custodian in the event of an exception.

Allen Cohen, digital officer and head of global fund services product- servicing at BNY Mellon, says this is the first of other possible partnerships the custodian will be making.

“We’ve been vocal about our open architecture for a while so this will be the first of selective partnerships that we will enter into,” Cohen says. “The plan has always been to offer our data and services to other firms so it will not be exclusive to BlackRock.”

Cohen declined to comment on whether any other discussions were currently underway.