Trade and Cash Reconciliation for Brokers and Fintechs: Buy a Product, Use Your Back-Office Module, or Build Your Own

Reconciliation is the regular check, usually daily, that your records of trades, positions and cash agree with the records of outside parties. These are the banks, custodians, liquidity providers, payment providers and exchanges that hold or move the money. A broker, crypto exchange or fintech can buy a reconciliation product, use the module of the back office or platform it already runs, or build its own matching and break workflow. For most firms with several counterparties and client money rules, the sound answer is to buy the product, keep your own copy of the raw data, and build only the checks the product cannot run.

What does a reconciliation have to match?

Each check compares one of your records with an outside one. Five checks cover most of the work:

• Trades: every fill on your platform against the report of the exchange, clearing broker or liquidity provider (the bank or broker on the other side of your trades).
• Positions: holdings in your books against the custodian's or liquidity provider's statement. At a crypto exchange, the client ledger against wallet balances on the blockchain.
• Cash: balances against bank statements and the settlement reports of payment service providers (PSPs), currency by currency.
• Fees and commissions: charges in your system against invoices from venues, banks and PSPs, and what you owe referral partners or, at a prop firm, funded traders.
• Client money: what you must hold for clients against what sits in segregated or safeguarding accounts. Most rules quoted below are about this check.

Checks also work at two levels. A balance check compares totals at one moment, and line matching pairs single items, such as a client deposit and its bank entry. Formance, which sells ledger software, says its own reconciliation “checks aggregate financial state per asset at a point in time. It does not match individual Ledger postings to bank or PSP statement lines.” A balance check shows that a difference exists. Line matching shows which item caused it, and most firms need both.

Why do spreadsheets and scripts stop working for reconciliation?

Many firms start with a spreadsheet or a script one analyst wrote. It works at low volume and fails in predictable places:

• Volume: partial fills, batched payouts and fee lines add rows faster than you add clients.
• Formats: Duco, a reconciliation vendor, describes a typical case where “one file denotes currency with a symbol, another with the three letter code, dates are in multiple formats, and frequently some data is missing.” A script built for one layout can fail silently when a column moves.
• Timing: statements arrive at different cut-off times and in different time zones, so a spreadsheet cannot tell a late statement from a missing payment.
• Ageing and audit trail: a spreadsheet rarely shows how long a break has been open, or who matched two lines and why.

Large firms have this problem too. Gresham, which sells reconciliation software, writes that “There is a slew of spreadsheet reconciliations sitting alongside almost every enterprise reconciliation platform in financial services.” Moving one of those spreadsheets onto the platform “often costs more in specialist resources, vendor engagement, implementation efforts, and change management than leaving it where it is.”

What do regulators expect from client money and safeguarding reconciliations?

Rules differ by country and licence, and these quotations are not the whole of each regime. Use them as a map for your lawyer.

• UK payments and e-money firms. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) added chapter CASS 15 in policy statement PS25/12 and said the rules would come into force on 7 May 2026. Internal and external reconciliations must run “as frequently as necessary and no less than once each reconciliation day”. Reconciliation days exclude weekends, bank holidays and days when a relevant foreign market is closed. A shortfall must be paid in “as soon as possible and, in any case, by the end of the day on which the reconciliation is performed”.
• UK investment firms. In its 2014 final rules on client money (PS14/9, chapter CASS 7), the FCA required an internal reconciliation “each business day”. The reconciliation had to be “based on the records of the firm as at the close of business on the previous business day”. External reconciliations had to run “as regularly as is necessary but without allowing more than one month to pass” between them. The FCA's guidance said that in most circumstances firms that undertake transactions daily “should conduct an external client money reconciliation each business day”. In 2026 the FCA amended section CASS 7.15, which holds these rules, so check the current Handbook text.
• EU investment firms. Commission Delegated Directive (EU) 2017/593, quoted as adopted, says firms “must conduct, on a regular basis, reconciliations between their internal accounts and records and those of any third parties by whom those assets are held”. The directive tells member states to require this, so check your national rules.
• EU payment institutions. Article 10 of the Payment Services Directive (EU) 2015/2366, quoted as adopted, sets how client funds are safeguarded, for example in “a separate account in a credit institution”. It does not mention reconciliation. Ask your regulator what evidence it expects.
• EU crypto-asset service providers. The Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) is quoted here from the online rulebook of ESMA, the EU securities regulator. Under its Article 75, a custodian keeps “a register of positions, opened in the name of each client”. “Any event likely to create or modify the rights of a client shall immediately be recorded” in it. Reconciling the register with wallet balances on the blockchain shows whether the two agree.
• US broker-dealers. Under Rule 15c3-3 of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a broker-dealer that holds customer funds or securities checks its books “Not later than the next business day”. It does this to determine how many fully paid and excess margin securities are, and are not, in its possession or control. In most cases it computes its customer reserve weekly, or daily, starting no later than six months after its average total credits reach $500 million. Rule 17a-13 requires a quarterly count and comparison of securities by people independent of their custody and records. Unresolved differences go on the books “no later than 7 business days” after the count.

Each reconciliation also needs a dated record. CASS 15, for example, asks a firm to record “the time and date it carried out the relevant process” and “the actions it took”, and to keep its records for 5 years.

How do you get data from every counterparty into one format?

Before anything is matched, files and messages have to arrive on time and in one format. Gresham lists sources such as “SWIFT messages, FIX feeds, ISO 20022 payment messages, custodian files, prime broker feeds”. SWIFT and ISO 20022 are bank message standards, and FIX is a message format used in trading. Timing differs by source too. B2Broker, which sells the B2CORE back office to brokers, gives an example. The trading platform shows a fill, but “the liquidity provider confirms a different quantity, and a crypto wallet posts the funding an hour later.”

Normalising makes these sources comparable:

• Identifiers: map your instrument codes, accounts and trade IDs to each counterparty's.
• Amounts: one sign convention, one currency code and enough decimal places. Gresham notes that crypto assets can carry “up to 18 decimal places”.
• Time: one time zone and a fixed cut-off for each source. The FCA's safeguarding rules require reconciliation points “at the same time(s) for every day”.
• Duplicates and gaps: a file sent twice, or a day missing.

Keep each file exactly as received, next to the normalised copy. The raw file is your evidence when a counterparty disputes a break, and it lets you run a match again after a rule changes.

How should matching rules and tolerances work?

A matching rule says which fields must agree for two records to count as one item. For trades, these are usually the trade or order ID, instrument, side, quantity and price. For cash, they are usually the amount, currency, value date and reference. Pairs can be one to one, such as a fill and the liquidity provider's ticket. They can be one to many, such as one bank credit for a PSP's batch of payments, or many to many, such as partial fills on both sides matched on order totals.

A tolerance is the difference you accept as a match, such as a rounding gap after a currency conversion. Duco describes “User-set tolerances, roll-up rules, fuzzy matching and multi-pass processing” as ways to remove false breaks. Gresham offers “N-way reconciliations, matching across three or more data sources in a single run”, for example your ledger, a liquidity provider and a bank.

A tolerance that absorbs a small fee gap every day can also hide a wrong fee for months. Give each tolerance an owner and a written reason, and log every rule change. Duco's data preparation page lists “Four-eye approval on configuration changes.” The FCA's safeguarding rules require a firm to investigate a difference found against a bank or custodian statement and take all reasonable steps to resolve it “without undue delay”. This requirement does not apply when the difference arises “solely as a result of timing differences”.

Who owns a reconciliation break, and how old may it get?

A break is a record with no match. Many are harmless, such as a late statement, but some are booking errors and a few mean that money is missing. Exception handling sorts them:

• Categories: label each break by cause, such as timing, missing data or booking error, so reports show what keeps going wrong.
• Owners: route each category to a named team, for example treasury for cash and the dealing desk for liquidity provider positions.
• Ageing: count days from the day a break first appeared, keep counting when it carries over, and escalate at set ages and amounts.
• Closure: record the cause, the fix and who approved closing the break.

Vendors build this in. Duco describes “One screen for workflow, ownership, ageing and audit”. Gresham's Control Cloud ranks exceptions “by age, value, and counterparty”.

Old breaks can cost money. The FCA's safeguarding rules cover the case where a firm cannot resolve a break against a statement at once and one record shows that more money is needed. The firm then “must assume, until the matter is finally resolved, that that record or set of records is accurate” and pay in its own funds. If your exchange trades at weekends, name who owns breaks on those days.

What does a reconciliation product give you, and where does it stop?

These are the vendors' own descriptions. Duco calls itself “the agentic Operations platform for financial services” and says implementation “can be done in a matter of days without large IT projects”. It adds that more complicated reconciliations “can take a few days or a few weeks”. In Gresham's Control Cloud, business users configure controls “directly in Control Studio, without specialist involvement.” AutoRek sells “automated client money and custody asset reconciliations” for the FCA's CASS 6 and 7 rules, and a separate safeguarding solution. Xceptor's FAQ says its clients “have completed initial implementations in a matter of months”. Smartstream sells Smart Reconciliations “on-premise or SaaS”.

A product brings connectors, a matching engine, a break workflow and an audit trail the vendor has already built. But you fit your data into the vendor's model, and a new reconciliation may need the vendor's specialists. You still have to fix gaps in your own feeds. Ask to see one of your reconciliations built on your own files during the trial.

Gresham also offers a managed service, which it describes as “outsourcing your reconciliation tasks to our experts”. If you take one, ask who signs off each day's result.

When is the module in your back office or platform enough for reconciliation?

The platform you already run often covers part of the job. B2Broker says B2CORE covers “the connectivity and record-keeping side” of what reconciliation needs. It describes B2CORE as “holding client, payment, regulatory compliance, and partner records in the system the reconciliation runs against.” Stripe's payout reconciliation report “helps you match the payouts you receive in your bank account with the batches of payments and other transactions that they relate to.”

Wallet and ledger platforms leave some checks to you. Fireblocks tells developers who receive deposits into its vault accounts: “Reconcile every deposit against the blockchain before you credit end users.” It calls this an “independent check” that complements its own controls. Formance's reconciliation, quoted above, checks balances and does not match single lines.

A module sees what its own platform sees, so a broker with two trading platforms and several liquidity providers has gaps unless one module reads them all. List every outside party that holds your money or positions. Then check which ones the module reads, whether it matches lines or only balances, whether breaks get an owner and an age, and whether you can export the history. If it covers the client money check end to end, it may be enough.

When should you build your own reconciliation system?

Building is justified in narrow cases. One is data that the products you tested cannot read, such as balances spread across your own matching engine and several blockchains. Another is a check inside your own platform, such as confirming each deposit before a client is credited. Either way you need engineers and operations staff who will stay with the system for years.

Matching is the small part. A build also needs a connector for each counterparty and someone to fix it when a layout changes. It needs a rule store with versions and approvals, the break workflow, an audit trail and reports an auditor can read.

Open-source parts do not always include reconciliation. Formance publishes its core ledger under the MIT licence, but lists its reconciliation module only in the paid Enterprise plan, an “Annual subscription, custom quote based on scale”.

A middle path is a thin own layer. You own the connectors, the raw files and a normalised store, and a bought product runs the matching and the break workflow on top. If you change products, the data and its history stay with you.

How do reconciliation vendors price their products?

Ask each vendor for a written quote. Duco, Gresham, AutoRek and Xceptor ask you to request or book a demo, and Formance names its model without figures. Duco's FAQ on buying reconciliation software lists what to count: “Consider upgrade costs, maintenance costs, IT and project costs, and intangible or opportunity costs.”

Ask for the price at your current volume and at double it, with one-off fees, and for the cost of adding a reconciliation or a counterparty format. Those costs decide whether your last spreadsheets ever move onto the product.

What does lock-in to a reconciliation vendor look like, and what should you keep so you can leave?

Lock-in sits in the rules and the history. Expect to rewrite matching rules when you change vendors, so document them in plain language. Break history is evidence you may need years later. The EU directive for investment firms quoted above asks for client asset records that “may be used as an audit trail”.

Duco says it “stores several years’ worth of historical data” and that you “can also export the data to upstream processes or downstream for other reporting purposes.” Test the export before you sign, and keep these in a format you can read without the vendor:

• Every source file as received, with the time it arrived.
• Matching rules and tolerances, with their history of changes and approvals.
• Every break, with its age, owner, comments, cause and closure.
• Daily sign-offs and the reports sent to auditors or regulators.

When you migrate, run both systems side by side until their breaks agree line by line, and carry open breaks across with their original age. Put the export, and a notice period long enough for that parallel run, into the contract.

What should you ask a reconciliation vendor, or a team that would build the system for you?

• Which of our banks, custodians, liquidity providers, PSPs and blockchains do you already read, and in what format?
• Do you match individual lines, or only balances?
• Who can change a tolerance, and is each change logged with its approver?
• How does a break get an owner, an age and an escalation?
• Can we export every source file, rule, break and sign-off, in what format and at what cost?
• What is the price at our current volume and at double it, and what does each new reconciliation cost?
• If you build it for us: who owns the code, and which parts reuse your existing components?

Where does amBrain fit?

amBrain publishes this blog. It describes parts of its trading work in three lines: “amBrain builds algorithmic trading infrastructure: order execution, market data and pre-trade risk controls.” “amBrain builds crypto exchanges: matching engine, wallets, deposits and withdrawals.” “amBrain builds platforms for proprietary trading firms: evaluation challenges, trading rules and accounting.” None of these lines names a reconciliation product. They are service descriptions only.

amBrain has been building software since 2019. On how it works with clients, it says: “Three formats: full delivery, a dedicated team, or engineers embedded in your team.” Its line on ownership is “The client keeps full ownership of the product and the code, except our reusable components.” Ask for the list of those components by name before you sign.

This article is not a case study and describes no client work. Nothing in it says that amBrain has built, sold or run a reconciliation system for any client. The quotations come from published pages of the companies named above, the FCA, ESMA, the Code of Federal Regulations and legislation.gov.uk, read on 12 November 2026. The article claims no relationship between amBrain and any of them, recommends none of their products and gives no amBrain prices or timelines.

It is not legal or accounting advice either. Check the rules that apply to your firm with a lawyer in each market where you hold client money or assets. If amBrain is on your shortlist, ask it the same questions as any other firm.