Northern Trust Corporation

Good day, and welcome to the first quarter 2022 Northern Trust earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mark Betty, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Jennifer. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Northern Trust Corporation's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Joining me on our call this morning are Michael Grady, our Chairman and CEO, Jason Tyler, our Chief Financial Officer, Lauren Allnut, our controller, and Briar Rose from our investor relations team. Our first 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 October 26th call is being webcast live on northerntrust.com. The only authorized rebroadcast of this call is the replay that will be made available on our website at through May 24th. 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 11 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 first quarter 2022 earnings call. I hope you and your families are healthy and well. Like so many around the world, we at Northern Trust are deeply concerned by the tragic events unfolding in Ukraine. Our hearts go out to the Ukrainian people. Northern Trust has made contributions to humanitarian relief efforts and has matched contributions from our employees to maximize our impact. While we have minimal direct exposure, the crisis brings unique challenges. The broad use of economic sanctions and market restrictions means that we, along with our peers and counterparties, have been called upon to play a role in implementing the world's response. The crisis has added to the uncertainty in the current environment, including volatile markets, supply chain constraints, and persistently high inflation. While we are navigating this challenging backdrop, our performance in the quarter generated a 9% increase in revenue compared to the prior year and a return on average common equity of 14.2%. Revenue growth reflected organic growth across each of our businesses as well as the impact of rising interest rates. Compared to the prior year, our results generated approximately two points of positive fee operating leverage and one point of positive total operating leverage. We continue 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 are growing across each of our regions and our global family office business. We continue to see strong levels of engagement and new business with both new and existing clients. Later this week, we will host our second annual virtual wealth planning symposium which will bring together experts from across the country to share planning strategies and perspectives to support the needs and interests of our clients. The theme of this year's symposium, Wealth Redefined, builds on the Northern Trust Institute's 2022 Wealth Planning Outlook, which examines how shifting values have given investors the resolve to pursue what matters most in our rapidly changing world. Within asset management, we saw strong year-over-year organic growth across key strategic areas of focus, including our FlexShares ETF, which surpassed $22 billion in assets, up 13% for the quarter. We saw strong growth in funds that traditionally offer inflation protection, including our Global Natural Resources Fund. We've continued to expand our FlexShares ESG and Climate Funds with the recent announcement of the launch of a fund with exposure to emerging markets. This fund builds on our existing suite of climate ETFs, which currently includes U.S. large-cap equities, developed markets, and two fixed-income funds. Our asset servicing business continues to drive organic growth across regions, products, and client segments. Our client focus and flexible global operating model continue to support our strategy, and our pipeline remains strong. At the start of this year, we combined our corporate and institutional services team with our global services operational team, creating a single integrated business unit with operational expertise focused on serving the needs and providing solutions for our institutional clients around the world. With this change, our corporate and institutional services reporting segment has been renamed asset servicing. We recently released our 2021 Philanthropic Impact Report, which highlights our commitments to our communities through charitable contributions and the many hours of volunteering from our staff. Our employees, the heart of Northern Trust, are extraordinarily talented and caring, and I commend their efforts in serving our clients and our communities. To close, we remain focused on our long-term priorities and investing wisely 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.