BST Awards 2022: Best buy-side reconciliation platform/service—SmartStream Technologies

Overview

SmartStream’s reconciliations solutions are designed to automate and standardize processing in order to enhance match rates and operational insights. They incorporate exception management, essential for the identification, prioritization, allocation and audit of issues associated with reconciliations. The introduction of AI modules further reduces manual touchpoints, as well as improves data quality and insights. Affinity, SmartStream’s latest machine learning technology, is employed by TLM Reconciliations Premium to observe users’ actions and understand how records correlate.

What problem does it address? 

TLM Reconciliations Premium is a single, scalable and flexible reconciliations platform that supports enterprise-wide transaction management. It facilitates the consolidation of transactional silos and removes the need for point solutions at different stages of the reconciliations lifecycle. Capable of handling reconciliations of all types, it allows firms to bring all reconciliations activities under one umbrella. According to SmartStream, a global financial institution currently using its reconciliation onboarding service has improved its auto-match rates by 97%, while its exceptions have been reduced by 67%.

Secret sauce 

TLM Reconciliations Premium is used across a range of businesses and functions including general ledger, treasury, digital payments, exchange-traded derivatives, net-asset value calculations, over-the-counter, nostro, securities services, payments, inter-systems and static data reconciliations. It delivers reconciliations capabilities with integrated exceptions management, workflows, account proofing and analytics features.

TLM Reconciliations Premium incorporates AI and machine learning functionality to support firms’ exception management functions, essential for the prioritization, allocation and audit of issues identified by reconciliations. Business users have access to a suite of analytical tools while reducing their reliance on IT support teams.

Recent milestones

• Enhanced user independence (through TLM View) supporting increased productivity and insights. SmartRecs with web-based configuration capabilities allows users to onboard reconciliations with a few clicks.
• Out-of-the-box support for ISO15022 and ISO20022 standards.
• Integration of AI capabilities in TLM Reconciliations Premium for optimal efficiency. 

Future objectives 

• SmartStream will support AI matching using Affinity Plus, its latest AI 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.
• Several planned SmartRecs enhancements for rapid onboarding of reconciliation without compromising the accuracy of match results. TLM SmartRecs significantly widens the number of users able to configure reconciliations.
• SmartStream will introduce a new module to handle digital payments. This is already available in its out-of-the box solutions, although larger financial institutions require more comprehensive functionality. 

Why they won 

SmartSteam continues its domination of the reconciliations space across both sides of the market, thanks largely to its AI-driven TLM Recs platform that not only learns how to match records by observing users’ actions, but also significantly reduces the volumes of exceptions firms need to match, an area where manual intervention has traditionally been necessary, arduous and complex.