Northern Trust has named David McPhillips director of consultant relations for the corporate and institutional services business unit in North America.

McPhillips will work closely with client service, sales, product development and operations teams to manage the asset servicing unit's interaction with North American consultants.

McPhillips comes to the consultant relations position from the transition management team at Northern Trust Global Investments, the asset management arm of Northern Trust.

He is based in Chicago and reports to Jon Dunham, director of North America asset servicing sales.

"David's appointment recognises the consultant community's important role in guiding institutional investors in this increasingly complex financial world," Dunham says. "David's understanding of the intricacies involved across all asset classes will serve him well in building relationships with the consultant community and presenting the full array of our solutions for supporting the world's largest, most sophisticated institutional investors."

McPhillips has more than a dozen years of experience in financial services, most recently as a transition management strategist. His duties combined trading, analysis, and portfolio management skills in order to administer asset allocation events for institutional and high net worth clients.

McPhillips began his career at Northern Trust as a regional manager for the investment management liaison group, where he helped investment management firms resolve domestic and international trade issues and was responsible for daily cash management of multiple currencies for international portfolios, among other issues.

Prior to Northern Trust, McPhillips held analyst, relationship manager and client service positions at Mellon Financial and Bank of Ireland Securities Services.

"Northern Trust recognises and appreciates that we share mutual clients with consultants. I am eager to build on the strong working relationship that we have established between custodian and consultant, a relationship that works toward the benefit of our clients," McPhillips says.