Northern Trust Collaborates with Industry Peers to Strengthen Data and AI Interoperability

Northern Trust announced at Snowflake’s annual user conference, Snowflake Summit 26, that it is a founding member of the Financial Services Working Group under Open Semantic Interchange (OSI).

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OSI is an open source initiative designed to help organizations work from shared, consistent data definitions. While a universal format provides the structural blueprint, the true value lies in contextualizing data to reflect the unique nuances of specific industries – a movement being led by the financial services sector.

In financial services, similar data – such as accounts, transactions, or market information – is often defined in different ways across firms. Convening financial institutions and technology partners, the OSI Financial Services Working Group will focus on harmonizing this fragmented data through an open, industry-neutral semantic model framework.

“OSI matters because it’s built with our peers, not defined in isolation,” said Jez Davies, Chief Information Architect at Northern Trust. “By co-creating industry standards, we’re laying the foundations for the Agentic future, enabling AI to reason across data in ways that are accurate, auditable and reproducible, while allowing our clients to seamlessly consume the same underlying semantic models.”

This specialized effort ensures that proprietary institutional data and third-party market intelligence share a consistent logical layer, enabling AI agents to navigate with precision, grounding, and scale that is essential for the Agentic Era. Through its participation, Northern Trust is helping advance shared data standards to improve interoperability across the financial ecosystem and support a common understanding among institutions, clients, and technology providers.

“Open architecture is central to how we help clients operate in an increasingly complex data and technology environment,” said Kelley Conway, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Northern Trust. “By establishing shared industry data standards, we’re making it easier for clients to integrate the tools and technologies they choose, while ensuring their data remains consistent, reliable, and ready to support AI-driven insights.”

“Unlocking the next era of financial services requires moving beyond data access to a foundation of autonomous execution, and the Open Semantic Interchange is the critical link in that evolution,” said John Heisler, Head of AI for Financial Services, Snowflake. “By establishing a vendor-neutral semantic standard with collaborators like Northern Trust, we are ensuring that AI agents across the ecosystem ground on the same foundational meanings. This shared vocabulary is essential for eliminating semantic friction, meeting rigorous global compliance, and enabling the high-conviction, agentic workflows that will define the future of the industry.”

OSI is poised to transform interoperability within the data and AI ecosystem by providing a transparent, community-driven standard. This collaborative effort under the OSI umbrella establishes the grounded context essential for the next frontier on innovation.

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