Northern Trust Corporation

Good day, and welcome to the Northern Trust Fourth Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to the Director of Investor Relations, Mark Bette. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Ally. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Northern Trust Corporation's Fourth Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me on our call this morning are Michael Grady, our chairman and CEO, Jason Tyler, our chief financial officer, and Lauren Allnut, our controller. Our fourth quarter earnings press release and financial trends report are both available on our website at northerntrust.com. Also on our website, you will find our quarterly earnings review presentation, which we will use to guide today's conference call. This January 20th call is being webcast live on northerntrust.com. The only authorized rebroadcast of this call is the replay that will be available on our website through February 17th. Northern Trust disclaims any continuing accuracy of the information provided in this call after today. Please refer to our safe harbor statement regarding forward-looking statements on page 13 of the accompanying presentation, which will apply to our commentary on this call. 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 in welcoming you to our fourth quarter 2021 earnings call. I hope you and your families are healthy and well. Our performance in the fourth quarter generated a 9% increase in revenue compared to the prior year and a return on average common equity of 14.5%. Revenue growth reflected strong organic growth across each of our businesses, which also contributed to full-year earnings growth and a return on average common equity of 13.9%. Throughout 2021, we continued to have success executing on our growth strategies across each of our businesses, while enhancing our foundational strength through advancements in our data and digital efforts. In our wealth management business, we have driven growth across each of our regions and our global family office business. We continue to see improved levels of engagement and new business activities with both existing and new clients. And we ended the year with a continuation of the strong growth in loans and deposits that we have seen throughout 2021. During the quarter, we began executing on our plans to expand our Florida footprint into Jacksonville, one of the fastest growing Northeast regions within Florida. We were honored to be recognized by the Financial Times Group as the best private bank in the U.S. for the 11th time in the past 13 years. We were also named the best private bank in the U.S. for family offices, recognizing our global family office group for its commitment to families of significant wealth, their private foundations, and the family offices that serve them. Within asset management, we continued to see strong organic growth across key strategic areas of focus, highlighted by our money funds surpassing $330 billion in AUM during the quarter, our flex shares ETFs reaching $20 billion in assets, and ESG strategies growing to more than $165 billion in assets. During the year, we also benefited from growth in our multi-manager strategies and our outsourced chief investment officer services. Our asset servicing business continues to experience growth that is well diversified across regions, products, and client segments. A highlight of our new business success is the recent announcement of the expansion of our relationship with Pendle Group across Australia, the UK, Ireland, and the US. Northern Trust has provided fund administration, global custody, and transfer agency services to Pendle since establishing its first mutual fund offering in the US in 2009. This mandate will now be extended to include fund accounting, regulatory reporting, collateral management, foreign exchange, and middle office services across all of Pendle's businesses. This is an excellent example of how we grow our asset servicing business by targeting a premier asset management firm, developing a relationship, providing exceptional service, growing along with their success in increasing their assets under management, and then expanding the relationship by consolidating their activities and providing a broader set of capabilities. I want to commend the efforts of our employees around the world whose commitment, expertise, and professionalism is serving our clients and communities and continues to be extraordinary. As we enter 2022, we remain focused on our long-term priorities and investing widely for future profitable growth to deliver long-term value to our various stakeholders. Now, let me turn the call to Jason to review our financial results in greater detail.