Northern Trust Corporation

Good day, everyone, and thanks for standing by. Welcome to today's Northern Trust's third quarter 2020 earnings call. A quick reminder that today's program is being recorded, and at this time, I'd like to turn the floor over to Mr. Mark Beatty, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Greg. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Northern Trust Corporation's third quarter 2020 earnings conference call. Joining me on our call this morning are Michael Grady, our Chairman and CEO, Jason Tyler, our Chief Financial Officer, Lauren Allnutt, our controller, and Kelly Lernahan from our investor relations team. Our third quarter earnings press release and financial trends report are both available on our website at norlandtrust.com. Also on our website, you will find our quarterly earnings review presentation, which we will use to guide today's conference call. This October 21st call is being webcast live on norlandtrust.com. The only authorized rebroadcast of this call is the replay that will be made available to on our website through November 18th. Northern Trust disclaims any continuing accuracy of the information provided in this call after today. Now for our safe harbor statement. What we say during today's conference call may include forward-looking statements, which are Northern Trust's current estimates and expectations of future events or future results. Actual results, of course, could differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements because the realization of those results is subject to many risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. I urge you to read our 2019 Annual Report on Form 10-K and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for detailed information about factors that could affect actual results. During today's question and answer session, please limit your initial query to one question and one related follow-up. This will allow us to move through the queue and enable as many people as possible the opportunity to ask questions as time permits. Thank you again for joining us today. Let me turn the call over to Michael Grady. Thank you, Mark.

Let me join and welcome you to our third quarter 2020 earnings call. Amid the ongoing public health crisis, I hope you and your families are healthy and well. At Northern Trust, we continue to operate in what we call resiliency mode, which means we're focused on providing our clients continuity of service while over 90% of our employees worldwide are working remotely. In this environment, we have adapted to a new normal as to how we serve and communicate with our clients. Though challenging, the transition across each of our businesses has been effective. Within wealth management, earlier this year, we introduced the Northern Trust Institute, the embodiment of the intellectual capital of our wealth management business, drawn from our experience serving the most affluent individuals and families in the world. It combines and integrates the best thinking of our firm across 34 practices, including areas such as investments, fiduciary, banking, planning, family business, philanthropy, and governance. We have also published a number of insights and research pieces covering timely topics in the current environment, including family governance, philanthropy, commercial real estate investing, and the upcoming U.S. election. Lastly, We've been very encouraged by the client and prospect participation in our digital Navigate the Now campaign, which is driving more engagement. Our asset management business is seeing considerable market share gains during 2020 within our liquidity products, which have strategically been positioned over time. We've also experienced recent success in our active and index fixed income and tax-advantaged equity products. We manage nearly $100 billion in assets globally under ESG mandates, where our strong capabilities position us for future growth in this space. Within asset servicing, as we've mentioned previously, we did see a deferral and implementation activity from the end of the first quarter and into the most recent quarter. However, the pipeline is strong and opportunities have increased as clients and prospects have adapted and become more comfortable operating in the current virtual environment. Recent notable public wins include Driehaus Capital Management, and Federated Mutual Insurance Company in the U.S., Marks & Spencer Pension Trust in the U.K., Hanover RE, a European-based insurer, and Aussie Moot Limited for its funds in the Middle East. We continually developed our solution-based services to support the needs of our clients, with two recent examples being enhancements to our ESG analytics capabilities to support our clients' oversight, risk, and exposures, and the launch of dynamic valuation and reporting tools for asset owners using our innovative front office solutions product. We also continue to build our positioning in the outsourcing space, most notably in outsource foreign exchange and trade execution. Finally, we just recently published our latest corporate social responsibility report, detailing our progress toward reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, enhancing our diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy, and launching client-focused ESG tools and investment vehicles, as I previously mentioned. As we move forward in the current and persistent low-interest rate environment, we will accelerate our focus in two areas. First, we will continue to drive greater efficiencies with a focus on technology solutions to drive productivity gains. Second, from a growth perspective, we're focused on doing more with our existing client base and also bringing on new clients to allow us to continue to grow organically in a scalable, profitable manner. Finally, I want to express my sincere appreciation for our staff, whose commitment, expertise, and professionalism throughout these extraordinary times has been exceptional. Now, let me turn the call to Jason to review our financial results for the quarter.

Thank you, Mike.