SunGard
IntelliMatch Operational Control is taking reconciliations to a new level. Paul Clapis and Jennifer Hanes of SunGard explain their evolutionary product
How would you both describe IntelliMatch Operational Control?
Paul Clapis: Our reconciliation product is a very horizontal component of our overall solution suite: it can match anything to anything. The product started with a focus on cash reconciliation, but our customers can now use it to reconcile securities, futures and options, derivatives, and ATM and credit card transactions, to name a few. IntelliMatch Operational Control fits very well into our solution portfolio and integrates well with other SunGard solutions, as many have a reconciliation requirement.
We’ve recently integrated it with Asset Arena InvestOne, which is one of our institutional asset management products, and IntelliMatch Operational Control has become the reconciliation component for that.
The product has about 400 customers worldwide comprising banks, brokers and buy-side firms. What is unique about the product is that once a customer starts using IntelliMatch Operational Control in one area of the organisation, it often sees an opportunity to expand that use into other areas, and other reconciliation types, too.
We are also seeing a trend within our customer base to form centres of excellence internally, especially for many of our enterprise customers that are trying to save costs. A lot of SunGard’s larger customers have historically deployed multiple reconciliation tools across the organisation, and they’re now choosing to consolidate with us using IntelliMatch Operational Control as their reconciliation platform of choice. Customers find IntelliMatch Operational Control can replace many of their existing reconciliation tools.
Does having multiple reconciliation systems cause additional risk to banks?
Clapis: It has a cost impact and an efficiency impact. One of the strengths of our IntelliMatch Operational Control solution is that it is a true enterprise tool. For example, it has proofing and attestation capability and a number of these smaller reconciliation tools don’t have that. A lot of the larger customers are building centres of excellence where they consolidate expertise into one platform and they become the experts on doing reconciliation across their enterprise with that one tool.
As a consequence, a lot of these small tools are starting to fall by the wayside because they don’t have the enterprise capabilities that our solution has.
Last year at the FTF ReCON Conference in New York, they did a poll and asked the audience how many of them were using spreadsheets in their reconciliation. Four fifths of the audience said they were. The audience was asked who saw the spreadsheet as a true reconciliation tool: nobody raised their hand. Spreadsheets just don’t meet today’s standards for auditing and compliance. One customer has said it used a spreadsheet for reconciliation that used 3000 macros. Can you imagine maintaining that?
Jennifer Hanes: Compliance with new regulation has become a lot stricter for our clients and niche products or tools such as Excel might have been adequate for a departmental view, but certainly that is no longer going to be adequate when looking to scale across the organisation. In that instance, it is time to take a different approach.
How much have regulations been a driver for reconciliation products?
Hanes: Very significantly, especially for the kind of reconciliations that are currently done manually or using tools such as Excel, I think those are ripe for attention. They are low cost and theoretically easy to manage, but high risk as they lack auditability. So the challenge now for customers is to decide how to move all their reconciliations very quickly into a robust product, in a scalable environment, so that they get the advantage and manage costs at the same time. IntelliMatch Operational Control is an easily integrated system that covers all types of reconciliations, so, regulation and costs can be managed.
To what extent does the system Control work in conjunction with other SunGard products?
Clapis: We are now integrating IntelliMatch Operational Control into a wide number of SunGard solutions. It has a relatively small footprint that can easily integrate with other solutions, allowing customers to leverage the reconciliation technology as part of a complete integrated solution. They may also see the opportunity to expand the use of IntelliMatch Operational Control to address other reconciliation requirements across their business.
Hanes: To complement that, many of our customers are moving towards a centre of excellence for reconciliation exclusively, so they are using IntelliMatch Operational Control on its own for its full power to handle the various types of reconciliation across the enterprise. Depending on the functional area within the bank, whether it is a private bank, an investment bank, or a financial centre, the product can be used for all types of reconciliations. The value of a centre of excellence to a large company is in consolidating costs, increasing operational efficiencies, and leveraging both technology and a knowledgeable team across many business areas.
Another example where we have integrated reconciliation to solve a specific business problem is with Apex Collateral. Here, we integrated IntelliMatch Operational Control to address the specific reconciliation requirements related to over-the-counter trade reconciliation, allowing for a more accurate view of collateral and so a better ability to manage that collateral proactively.
