Northern Trust has appointed Ian Castledine as Senior Risk Consultant. He is charged with enhancing the bank’s London-based predictive risk capabilities for asset servicing clients in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.
Although Northern Trust has been providing global predictive risk analytics services since 1997, Castledine’s appointment means that Northern Trust will be offering this service from London for the first time, facilitating the servicing of EMEA clients closer to their own time-zone.
Northern Trust says predictive risk is about providing total plan, asset class and portfolio level risk analysis that helps pension funds to identify future potential risk issues in their portfolios before they cause performance surprises.
Castledine’s responsibilities will include developing the scale and scope of Northern Trust’s predictive risk capabilities in London, building on the organisation’s existing capabilities and expertise in this area. Initially, he will focus on services for pension fund clients, however, long-term strategy is to also develop capabilities for providing predictive risk analytics to the investment manager segment.
Castledine joins Northern Trust from Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (MLIM) in London, where he spent almost eight years, latterly as an Equity Risk Quant Analyst. Previously at MLIM, he was a Risk & Performance Analyst and a Pooled Portfolio Analyst.
“This is a critical role for our group as we see the demand for specialist predictive risk services from EMEA clients continuing to rise,” says Jim Trotter, Head of Northern Trust’s EMEA Investment Risk & Analytical Services team in London. “This is being driven in part by regulation such as UCITS III and the FTK rules in the Netherlands, and the upward trend for investment in alternative assets.As a global custodian, Northern Trust is able to provide clients with independent risk analytics that take into account total plan assets. Being able to provide this level of independent nalysis is increasingly of interest to pension funds in EMEA. Ian’s appointment is in line with our long-term strategy of developing this part of our business outside of the US, which we believe will further differentiate us from our competitors.”