BST Awards 2021: Best buy-side reconciliation platform/service—SmartStream Technologies

OVERVIEW

TLM Reconciliations Premium is designed to help buy-side firms reconcile any data for any reason. Featuring embedded artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies, it provides users with fast and accurate exception management capabilities.  

Typical user-firms: Tier-one and tier-two buy-side institutions, including asset managers, pension funds, private banks, wealth managers, insurance firms and hedge funds.

SmartStream increased its headcount by 8% in 2020 and this trend is set to continue. The industry’s growing interest in managed services is reflected by the rising number of engagements SmartStream has had, with bookings up by 50% at the end of 2020. The year to date has seen a 23% growth in revenue for the firm’s managed services unit.

WHAT’S NEW 

SmartStream has enhanced user independence through the release of TLM View, providing increased productivity and greater insights. It has integrated AI capabilities within TLM Reconciliations Premium to optimize accuracy and efficiency around the reconciliations process. Affinity, the firm’s latest machine learning technology, is designed to observe users’ actions and establish its own understanding of how records correlate. It then assists users to significantly reduce the time it takes to match large, complex datasets. The introduction of AI modules reduces manual touch points and improves data quality/insight. The firm has noted increased interest in the use of reconciliation as a spot check between systems to ensure accuracy, while digital payments processing, already a growing market, has been accelerated by the increased use of contactless payments.

WHAT’S TO COME 

SmartStream is set to add AI matching to TLM Reconciliations Premium using Affinity Plus, its AI-based observational learning solution to meet the demands and business agility for operational data management and data-quality processes. This provides more flexibility for specific user-learning requests. TLM SmartRecs widens the number of users able to configure reconciliations. SmartStream is set to introduce a new module to handle digital payments―already available in its out-of-the box solutions―although larger institutions require more comprehensive functionality. 

WHY THEY WON

SmartStream’s TLM Reconciliations Premium continues to be the benchmark against which all reconciliation platforms are measured. Its infusion of AI-based observational learning technology is genuinely game-changing, especially when it comes to the complex and laborious process of matching apparently unconnected records across vast, complex datasets. The technology observes the rationale a human would use to match two records, which it then mimics and radically improves in terms of accuracy and time.