AutoRek redefines reconciliation through operational excellence

As transaction volumes rise, asset classes diversify and regulatory obligations become more onerous across the financial services industry, reconciliation functions have evolved to become more than simply back-office control functions. In this thought-leadership paper, AutoRek argues that operational excellence is now central to firms’ abilities to scale efficiently, manage their various risks and bolster their all-round financial operations. In short, firms are increasingly looking to enhance their levels of automation and control, thus transforming their reconciliation functions into a competitive differentiator.

Key themes of this paper include:

• Five use cases outlining how operational excellence is already being delivered across complex reconciliation environments, including diverse asset classes, high-volume processing, multi-source reconciliation, calculation-driven controls and regulatory reporting
• A seven-step framework underpinning operational excellence, including data ingestion, data management, intelligent matching, exception management, workflow governance, auto journalling and reporting
• The importance of embedding validation and auditability alongside increased levels of automation throughout the reconciliation lifecycle, reducing operational risk and improving scalability
• The growing role of artificial intelligence in supporting exception handling and operational decision-making while supporting, rather than replacing, operations teams.

The paper highlights how reconciliation is becoming increasingly data-centric as firms are having to manage ever-increasing transaction volumes, hybrid portfolios and more complex operating models. Traditional reconciliation processes characterised by manual touch points and disparate, often legacy, platforms are no longer fit for purpose. Instead, operational excellence hinges on firms’ abilities to establish a consistent control framework capable of validating data at source, automating routine matching, managing exceptions swiftly and transparently, and establishing all-important data lineage throughout the reconciliation process.

Underpinning this strategy is AutoRek’s seven-stage operating model that connects various stages of the reconciliation lifecycle into a single workflow. Together with AutoRek’s reconciliation capabilities, matching logic and reporting functionality, the framework allows user firms to standardise controls while retaining the flexibility to add new products, data sources and regulatory requirements when needed. The result is a more resilient, yet flexible, operating model designed to improve efficiency, strengthen governance and free up operations teams, allowing them to focus on oversight and decision-making as opposed to repetitive manual processing.