Northern Trust expands digital asset reporting with Lukka

Northern Trust has entered into an agreement with Lukka to expand its digital asset reporting service, adding access to digital asset data for institutional clients.

The arrangement will allow the bank to offer reporting on digital asset transaction histories and point-in-time balances, including historical views, as part of its broader asset servicing work.

Northern Trust is using Lukka's data platform to connect with more than 100 blockchains and more than 400 centralised and decentralised exchange sources. The setup also covers custodians, over-the-counter desks, wallets and on-chain activity.

This gives the group a way to ingest wallet, balance and transaction data and standardise reporting across the fragmented digital asset market. The service is aimed at institutions that want digital asset records alongside reporting for traditional holdings.

The agreement reflects a broader push by established financial institutions to build systems around digital assets without separating them from existing reporting and operational models. As institutional investors test allocations to tokenised and crypto-related markets, banks and service providers have been trying to meet demand for reconciled records, historical balance data and audit trails.

For Northern Trust, the deal extends its work to combine digital market functions with its existing custody, administration and banking operations. The company serves corporations, institutions, affluent families and individuals, and reported USD $20.0 trillion in assets under custody or administration and USD $2.0 trillion in assets under management.

Lukka was founded in 2014 and focuses on blockchain data and software for financial institutions, exchanges, fund administrators and government agencies. Its platform is designed to turn raw on-chain and off-chain activity into data that can be used for accounting, compliance, risk and reporting processes.

Client demand

Northern Trust described the agreement as a response to rising client demand for a more consistent approach to tracking digital asset exposure.

"Clients are seeking a more streamlined and institutional approach to managing and reporting on their digital asset exposures," said Justin Chapman, Group Head of Strategic Partnerships, Digital and Financial Markets at Northern Trust. "This relationship with Lukka allows us to deliver a critical capability, bringing together digital and traditional asset reporting, while continuing to build toward a more comprehensive, interoperable and connected digital asset servicing model."

For large asset servicers, the focus on combining digital and traditional asset reporting is significant, as crypto and related holdings have often been treated as a separate operational problem. Integrating records across both areas may help clients that want a single reporting framework across multi-asset portfolios.

The use of a third-party specialist also highlights banks' continued reliance on external providers for parts of the digital asset stack, especially in data collection and normalisation. Digital asset reporting remains difficult because information can sit across public blockchains, private wallets, trading venues and custodians, often in different formats and with varying levels of completeness.

Data challenge

Lukka said its role is to bring those sources together in a form institutions can use for reporting and oversight.

"We are proud to support Northern Trust as it expands its digital asset servicing capabilities for institutional clients," said Kiet Tran, Chief Executive Officer at Lukka. "Institutions need digital asset data that is complete, normalised, and audit-ready. Lukka's platform brings together on- and off-chain data across wallets, blockchains, venues, and custodians, helping firms deliver consistent reporting with the controls and transparency expected in traditional finance."

The arrangement comes as financial groups face continued pressure to show that digital asset services can meet the record-keeping standards applied in mainstream markets. Transaction tracing, reconciliations and historical reporting are basic requirements for many institutional investors, particularly where internal governance, audit review and regulatory scrutiny are involved.

Northern Trust has been building out services tied to digital markets as clients weigh exposure to a sector that remains operationally complex. Its approach has focused on linking those services to established market infrastructure rather than treating them as stand-alone products.

The addition of Lukka's data network gives the bank broader reach across exchanges, wallets and blockchain environments, which remain highly dispersed despite growing institutional participation. That breadth may matter for asset managers, fund administrators and other institutions that need consolidated records across multiple trading venues and custody arrangements.

Lukka operates under AICPA SOC 1 Type II and SOC 2 Type II frameworks, according to the company, a detail that may matter to financial institutions assessing controls around outsourced data processes.