LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nearly a third (28%) of financial services organisations say that mistakes from manual processes are their biggest data reconciliation pain points. This is according to research released today from data firm Duco and Financial Technologies Forum (FTF), exploring the experiences of reconciliation teams within the global financial services industry.
Error-riddled processes, which are harder to manage while people work from home, cause more headaches to reconciliation teams than a lack of operational data (19%), operational risk (15%), internal politics (11%), compliance (6%) and regulatory risk (3%).
These manual processes lead to poor quality data, poor decisions and are costing financial firms millions in wasted man hours and regulatory fines, according to the study by Duco.
The report also finds that around three fifths (64%) of financial services firms believe that implementing transformational change to these processes would be too expensive or time consuming within their organisation. As a result, just over one in five (22%) are able to automate most of their reconciliations.
However, the future of data reconciliation looks bright. Two thirds (66%) of financial services organisations expect new solutions that automate manual processes to be one of their top-three greatest investment areas in the next three years — while 68% expect to have fully automated their reconciliation function within the next five years.
Christian Nentwich, CEO, Duco said: “We understand why firms rely heavily on manual processes for their reconciliation. They’re easier to implement compared to old tech-heavy solutions, and everybody gets how Microsoft Excel works.
“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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About Duco
Duco, a leading data automation company, is helping businesses to unleash their potential by removing the friction around data. Duco’s cloud-based, no-code platform brings together data quality, reconciliation, data preparation and management, giving firms the tools they need to increase business agility, reduce risk, stay compliant with regulation and dramatically improve efficiency. Over 10,000 users across 30+ countries process billions of data records every week using the platform. Duco is headquartered in London, with offices in New York, Edinburgh, Wroclaw and Singapore. Customers include global banks, investment managers, insurance firms and challenger Fintech companies, such as Societe Generale, ING, Man Group and Currencycloud. For more information go to www.du.co
About Financial Technologies Forum
Founded in 2006, Financial Technologies Forum (FTF) is a women-owned media company focused on delivering news, live interviews, other useful content, premier conferences, interactive webinars, and a variety of special events for the professionals that make capital markets work. FTF focuses on middle- and back-office operations, IT innovation and advances in compliance, regulation, market structure and key aspects of global securities processing. Our global client base consists of C-suite executives and senior level securities professionals from leading financial services institutions, upstart firms, service providers and financial technology companies. Our online news service, FTF News and magazine FTF Focus offer original editorial content, news updates, in-depth analysis and industry research on all things related to securities operations, fintech, compliance, regulatory matters and trends affecting middle and back-office operations. FTF also assists leading financial technology and service providers with various marketing and lead generation services. For more information go to www.ftfnews.com
