Pershing is beginning to revive from the major client losses it took last year, reported parent company BNY Mellon on April 16.
Pershing grew revenue to $670 million in the first quarter, up 3% from a year earlier and nearly flat to the fourth quarter. Last year, Pershing took a nearly $100 billion hit when its assets under custody dropped after JPMorgan Chase assumed the wealth management arm of the collapsed
BNY Mellon has been working on moving the institutional operations from Pershing to one larger operating platform. This is part of a multistage process in which the company is streamlining most of its operations, with the first stage of its new model going live last month.
"It's early in the journey. I would have said maybe last year we were working on the problem. I think now, I would say we're working on the opportunity," BNY Mellon's CEO Robin Vince said on the earnings conference call about the company's overhaul.
READ MORE:
Total assets under custody and/or administration at BNY Mellon grew 5% to $48.8 trillion in the first quarter compared to a year earlier and up 2% from the fourth quarter.
Total revenue from BNY Mellon's Market and Wealth Services segment, which includes Pershing, increased 3% to $1.52 billion in the first quarter compared to a year ago.
In its Investment and Wealth Management segment, BNY Mellon saw total revenue specifically from its wealth line of business increase 2% to $270 million in the first quarter. That same bump from last quarter as well as year over year, was due to "higher market values, partially offset by changes in product mix and lower net interest income," the megabank said in its report.
Stronger revenues in areas like wealth and fee income helped drive BNY Mellon's net income by 4.6% to $953 million, or $1.25 a share, in the first quarter compared to a year earlier.
Vince said he expects the "de-conversion" of Pershing, mainly related to the client offloading last year, to be finished by the third quarter this year.
"While the deconversion was unfortunate, you know, we continue to march on," he said. "We still, as a business, feel very, very good about Pershing and our market that's growing in the mid-single digits on an annual basis. And we're a big player in that market, so we're going to win our shares."
For earnings and analysis from last quarter,
