Gresham launches AI tool to speed reconciliation controls

Gresham has launched Control Studio for its Control reconciliation product, targeting business users that manage complex reconciliation tasks.

Control Studio is an AI-enabled self-service tool that lets users build and maintain reconciliation controls without coding or specialist configuration skills. It supports complex and multi-way reconciliations across multiple data sources.

The launch comes as financial institutions face pressure to update operational controls more quickly as products, processes and regulatory obligations grow more complex. Reconciliation has also become more demanding as firms handle larger volumes of data and face tighter expectations around governance and oversight.

The software uses generative AI to convert business requirements into rules and configuration for the Control platform. Through a guided interface, users can set up data sources, matching rules, validations and exception workflows using business terms rather than technical instructions.

Users can build controls against sample data before they go live, allowing them to test the effect of changes in advance. The tool can also identify correlations between datasets and suggest possible matching keys and validation checks, while natural-language assistants help create search expressions and enrichment rules.

In practice, the product is intended to shift more configuration work from specialist technical teams to operational staff that already understand the underlying data. That could reduce delays when a small group of technical users becomes a bottleneck for changes to reconciliation processes.

Regulatory focus

Gresham linked the launch to a broader compliance backdrop in financial services, pointing in particular to the Digital Operational Resilience Act, which has introduced harmonised European Union requirements for ICT risk management and digital operational resilience for financial entities.

Those requirements have increased attention on governance, controls across critical operations and the avoidance of ad hoc end-user computing tools. In that environment, firms are under pressure to make changes quickly while maintaining auditability and formal control over production systems.

Gresham said Control Studio is designed to increase the share of business users who can create controls themselves, with reconciliations going live 20 times faster. It presented that as a way for firms to respond more quickly when products, processes or regulatory requirements change.

"Reconciliation has become harder to change at the pace the business now demands, not because firms lack the expertise, but because technical configuration takes too long. Control Studio puts the people who understand the data in control of the process, using generative AI to turn business requirements into the rules and configuration needed by Control. That means firms can respond faster as products, processes and regulatory requirements change, while keeping the governance, auditability and complexity they need in production," said Neil Vernon, Global Head of Product - Control and Data Service at Gresham.

Gresham focuses on data automation, reconciliation, control and regulatory reporting for financial services firms. With Control Studio, it aims to move more day-to-day reconciliation design closer to business teams while retaining the structured rules and oversight required in banking and capital markets operations.