Shundrawn Thomas, Head Of Northern Trust's Exchange Traded Funds Group. (Photo: Business Wire)

Northern Trust (NASDAQ: NTRS), a leading provider of financial services for institutions and individuals, announced today the launch of FlexShares, a new family of exchange traded funds based on indexes created and maintained by Morningstar, Inc. and Markit. Four ETFs are now available, each designed to provide flexibility to construct, allocate and manage portfolios according to real-world goals.

Shundrawn Thomas, Head of Northern Trust's Exchange Traded Funds Group. (Photo: Business Wire)

The FlexShares funds available on the New York Stock Exchange include:

• FlexShares Morningstar Global Upstream Natural Resources Index Fund
• FlexShares Morningstar U.S. Market Factor Tilt Index Fund
• FlexShares iBoxx 3-Year Target Duration TIPS Index Fund
• FlexShares iBoxx 5-Year Target Duration TIPS Index Fund

“FlexShares represent Northern Trust’s global expertise in asset management, investment solutions and risk management,” said Shundrawn Thomas, head of Northern Trust’s Exchange Traded Funds Group. “With $684 billion in assets under management, Northern Trust has deep connections to sophisticated investors, and FlexShares reflect our insights into investor needs in an evolving marketplace. FlexShares are designed to help construct and manage portfolios that seek to achieve investor goals, while offering all the traditional benefits of ETFs.”

• FlexShares Morningstar Global Upstream Natural Resources Index Fund [ GUNR] – Seeks to offer balanced exposure to rising global demand for natural resources, emphasizing companies with business interests in the early stages of the resource supply chain.“Exposure to natural resource commodities is an investment strategy tool for investors to participate in the rising prices of raw materials because of increased global demand,” Thomas said. “At a time when natural resources are gaining in strategic importance to nations, companies and investors, an allocation to these assets can be a useful component of a diversified investment portfolio. We worked with Morningstar, leveraging its deep research and index construction experience, to create an index with efficient, global exposure to a broad array of upstream-focused natural resource-related companies.”

• FlexShares Morningstar U.S. Market Factor Tilt Index Fund [ TILT] – Seeks to offer an alternative exposure to the broad U.S. stock market by tilting the portfolio to capture the size and value premiums in the equity market.“Morningstar’s index captures 99.5 percent of the U.S. market,” Thomas said. “With a rules-based tilt toward small cap and value, the FlexShares Morningstar U.S. Market Factor Tilt Index ETF counterbalances the inherent bias toward large-growth companies embedded in market-weighted mutual funds.”
• FlexShares iBoxx 3-Year Target Duration TIPS [ TDTT] and FlexShares iBoxx 5-Year Target Duration TIPS Index Funds [ TDTF] – Seek to provide investors access to Treasury Inflation Protected Securities with stable duration exposure through changing interest rate and economic cycles. The funds’ secondary goal of income generation may also help diversify portfolios. iBoxx is a family of independent bond indexes provided by Markit, a leading financial information services company.“The FlexShares TIPS ETFs precisely target TIPS durations, seeking to provide investors with more efficient inflation-hedging strategies than market-weighted investment products,” Thomas said. “Using indexes developed by Markit, these are the first ETFs to offer investors a passively managed, liquid investment vehicle that effectively removes duration variability in a TIPS portfolio.”

For more information: http://www.flexshares.com

An investment in FlexShares is subject to investment risk, including the possible loss of principal amount invested. Fund returns may not match the return of their respective Index. The Funds’ may invest in emerging and foreign markets, derivatives and concentrated sectors. In addition, the Funds’ may be subject to asset class risk, small cap stock risk, value investing risk, non- diversification risk, fluctuation of yield, income risk, interest rate/maturity risk, currency risk, passive investment risk, inflation protected security risk, market risk and manager risk. For a complete description of risks associated with each Fund please refer to the prospectus.

Before investing carefully consider the FlexShares investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. This and other information is in the prospectus, a copy of which may be obtained by visiting http://www.flexshares.com . Read the prospectus carefully before you invest.

FlexShares ETFs are distributed by Foreside Fund Services, LLC, not affiliated with Northern Trust.

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