As the Global Head of Asset Servicing at BNY, Emily Portney stands at the helm of a business that anchors the global investment ecosystem. With a career that spans investment banking, CFO leadership, and now one of the most critical operational roles in financial services, Portney brings a unique blend of strategic foresight and operational depth. In this interview with Traders Magazine, she shares how her diverse experience is shaping BNY’s transformation from a traditional custodian into a platform-driven, end-to-end investment partner—one that is redefining market infrastructure through innovation, data, and a deep understanding of clients’ evolving needs.
Please tell us about your role.
I lead BNY’s Asset Servicing business, which is responsible for providing custody, fund services, private market support and data solutions to some of the largest asset owners, asset managers, insurers, banks, and broker-dealers globally. I’ve always been interested by how the investment ecosystem operates and so this is perhaps the perfect role, as the work we do truly underpins global capital markets and touches every stage of the financial investment lifecycle.
You’ve had a diverse career spanning investment banking, CFO responsibilities, and now leading asset servicing at BNY. How have these experiences shaped your approach to redefining the role of a custodian in today’s market?
To quote the ice hockey great Wayne Gretzky, you have to “skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been” and I believe this is true in whatever business or role you’re in. In my world of asset servicing, the industry today looks totally different from 30 years ago and it’s constantly evolving, from the arrival of new, competitive players to innovative investment vehicles that require new operating models to deliver. So, staying laser-focused on the future is key.
Asset servicing is evolving rapidly. What strategic initiatives are you spearheading at BNY to position it as more than just a custodian but as a strategic partner for clients?
While we are proud of our position as ‘the world’s largest custodian,’ we’re a global financial services company with solutions that support clients across every stage of the investment lifecycle. In fact, we are organizing the company and operating BNY as a platform enterprise more than ever before. This means looking at industry groups and across client personas to understand their needs and how we can help them leverage the entirety of our capabilities – from launching a new product, to administering and servicing the product, all the way to distribution (through both institutional and retail channels). It also means being able to help these clients with any liquidity, collateral management, data, and trading solutions required to manage and optimize their portfolios. In sum, we are stitching all the capabilities across BNY together in a much more holistic fashion, providing end-to-end solutions that really resonate in the marketplace.
As traditional custody services expand into more holistic solutions, what role do you see BNY playing in the future of asset servicing and market infrastructure?
As the investment landscape evolves, client requirements are becoming more sophisticated, necessitating more specialization to drive growth and scalability. For example, the proliferation of ETFs, the rebirth of CITs, the rise of managed accounts and customized models, as well the complexity of fund types in the alternatives space, mean clients are looking for a wider range of services and expertise from their asset servicer. They want to partner with a highly resilient and scalable player, yet one that can also be innovative and nimble in order to power their growth. BNY is well placed to help managers expand into new products and wrappers; in fact, we have helped many traditional mutual fund managers launch ETFs, convert mutual funds and SMAs to ETFs, and are supporting the launch of new vehicles in alternatives, like interval funds, that are bringing a combination of public and private investment to retail investors.
With increased demand for real-time data and transparency, how is BNY leveraging automation, AI, and blockchain to enhance its asset servicing capabilities?
We’re focused on injecting AI capabilities into our teams’ – and by extension – our clients’ daily lives, and have already developed over 40 AI solutions through BNY’s enterprise AI platform, Eliza. As one example, our Fund Accounting team is leveraging a Dynamic Fund Benchmarking solution to detect unusual patterns while calculating NAV, reducing errors and promoting proactive alerts. By leveraging this AI solution, we have significantly reduced false positives from 90% to less than 20%, helping to minimize risk for our clients, and enabling teams to focus on resolving true anomalies. We are also using Generative AI in a number of areas across our business including extracting data from unstructured documents, reconciliations, liquidity forecasting, and RFP preparation.
In terms of blockchain, we are perhaps the only institutional bank that has built a native custody capability for digital assets and are working with clients to tokenize money market funds. We are also looking at ways to modernize transfer agency services with end investors by leveraging distributed ledger technology and are piloting new payment and collateral solutions to facilitate real-time money movement and settlement.
Many institutional investors are looking for end-to-end solutions across the investment lifecycle. How is BNY evolving to meet these demands, particularly in fund administration and middle-office services?
Our strategic acquisition of BNY Archer last fall is a good example of BNY becoming a platform company – in this case, across the entire managed account ecosystem for both institutional and retail managed accounts. Managed accounts are one of the fastest-growing investment vehicles in the asset management industry. Our acquisition of BNY Archer has enhanced our capabilities across the entire managed account ecosystem, including manufacturing, distribution, and servicing, and means we now offer investors fully integrated, end-to-end managed account solutions.
We have also seen significant growth in our middle-office outsourcing where clients lean on us for reconciliation, settlement services, and collateral management, all the way through to IBOR, and we continue to build new capabilities like outsourced trading and transition management services. Finally, our data and analytics solutions are becoming increasingly important, especially our ability to help clients bring together their public and private holdings into one unified view for performance, attribution, and risk reporting.
Given your experience in both investment banking and asset servicing, how do you see the evolution of liquidity dynamics, regulatory challenges, and operational efficiencies shaping the future of market structure?
The combination of fee compression, M&A, the rapid pace of technology change, and a dynamic macro-economic and regulatory backdrop translate to the need for greater efficiency, scale, and nimbleness. This is across all aspects of the financial spectrum – from one’s operating model and tech stack, to their liquidity needs, to their analytic tools and governance requirements, as well as portfolio management/optimization. BNY has a comprehensive set of capabilities that allow clients to be on the front foot, powering their evolution and accelerating their growth without having to do everything themselves. To this end, BNY’s Future of Asset Management report found that almost 50% of asset managers and 40% of asset owners are assessing the need for additional outsourcing to support their operating model. We expect this will only continue.
What impact do new regulations and evolving market infrastructure have on asset managers and broker-dealers, and how is BNY helping clients navigate these changes?
Our role is to deliver capabilities that enable our clients’ growth, deliver scale and drive resiliency, while meeting evolving regulatory requirements and embracing innovation. For example, we are helping clients prepare for T+1 in Europe as well as central clearing of the treasury market in the US. We are developing solutions to monetize collateral more quickly, facilitate real-time payments and we are also at the forefront of innovation in supporting tokenization and digital assets. We have a broad and global perspective, as well as deep relationships with our various stakeholders, so we see it as our job to help our clients better understand the evolving regulatory landscape and work with them on how best to meet their objectives.
The asset management industry is facing fee compression and an increased focus on efficiency. How is BNY helping clients scale while maintaining profitability?
Overall fee pressure on our clients, combined with digital transformation and a complex macro picture, mean that most managers and investors are exploring partnerships to drive efficiency and scalability. By leveraging BNY’s vast capabilities, global scale, and enormous investment in technology and talent, clients can focus on what is core to them – achieving superior returns and outcomes for their own investors.
