Thomas Murray

Asset owners relying on third-party custodians face a persistent challenge: they often lack independent, structured visibility into the operational risks, financial health, and service quality of the providers holding their assets. Thomas Murray addresses this directly through a managed service combining analyst-led research with the Orbit Risk platform, covering custodian selection, ongoing oversight, and operational due diligence for institutional asset owners including pension funds, sovereign wealth vehicles, and large investment offices.

The firm organises its offering around three distinct client groups: banks managing correspondent and network relationships, financial market infrastructure bodies seeking regulatory assessments, and asset owners who need to select and monitor custodians or conduct due diligence on fund managers. For asset owners, the core workflows include:

• Custodian RFP and selection processes supported by structured evaluation frameworks
• Ongoing custodian monitoring and benchmarking against peer providers
• Operational due diligence on investment managers, covering governance, controls, and operational resilience
• Cyber risk scoring and third-party security monitoring via Orbit Security
• Automated DDQ and RFI management through Orbit Diligence

The Orbit Risk platform introduces AI-assisted tools, continuous cyber risk ratings, and a centralised risk intelligence dashboard, reducing the manual burden on internal teams. Northern Trust and Barclays appear among named clients, which signals that the platform is built for institutional scale rather than smaller, less complex operations.

Family offices with significant allocations through external custodians or those allocating to third-party fund managers will find the operational due diligence and custodian oversight services directly applicable. Pricing is not disclosed publicly, and the firm’s primary client relationships appear to be with large banks and institutional asset owners rather than family offices specifically, which may affect service customisation for smaller mandates.