Reconciliation now a critical facet of firms’ operational framework

Buy- and sell-side firms have found that as transaction volumes have increased and asset classes continue to diversify, reconciliation is no longer just another back-office control―it now plays a critical role in their operational framework, helping them to scale efficiently, while also enhancing their various risk management functions.

This is the key takeaway from a thought-leadership paper published by AutoRek that explores how firms can turn reconciliation into a competitive advantage through improved levels of automation and more effective use of their data. The paper examines five practical use-cases covering complex asset classes, high-volume processing, multi-source reconciliation, calculation-driven controls, and regulatory reporting. It also presents a seven-stage framework that focuses on data ingestion, data management, intelligent matching, exception management, workflow governance, auto journaling, and reporting. Core to this framework is the requirement for firms to combine improved levels of automation with validation, auditability and data lineage, thus reducing their operational risk and crucially maintaining all-important control of their data and various downstream processes.

As reconciliation becomes increasingly data-centric, legacy platforms and manual processes will inevitably need to be curtailed or, wherever possible, eliminated altogether.