28 per cent of financial services organisations say mistakes from manual processes are their biggest data reconciliation pain point.

Research from Duco and Financial Technologies Forum found that error-riddled processes, which are even harder to manage while people are working from home, are more of an issue to reconciliation teams than a lack of operational data (19 per cent), operational risk (15 per cent), internal politics (11 per cent), compliance (6 per cent), and regulatory risk (3 per cent.)

But 64 per cent of financial services companies surveyed said that implementing transformational change to these processes would be too expensive or time consuming in their organisation.

Only 22 per cent of respondents said they are able to automate most of their reconciliations.

“We understand why firms rely heavily on manual processes for their reconciliation,” said Christian Nentwich, chief executive, Duco. “They’re easier to implement compared to old tech-heavy solutions, and everybody gets how Microsoft Excel works.”

He added: “But manual processes are costing firms substantial money and keeping resiliency risk high. One of Duco’s clients had a spreadsheet with an incorrect calculation that was costing them close to $3 million every year in addition to the continuing operational fixed cost of manual processes and reputational risk. But now there is a huge opportunity with new technology to help financial services organisations save considerable man hours, mitigate operational risk and comply with regulation.”

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