Aurum has scaled and grown with us over time.

TLDR/Summary Boxes:

Why Aurum?

• A proven relationship spanning more than two decades
• Competitive cost
• Requirements delivered without over-engineering
• Flexibility and a culture of saying yes

Benefits

• Month-end reporting reduced from around four days to less than one
• Daily CASS safeguarding reconciliations across four providers and twoledgers
• A full, auditable trail of client money calculations, ready for the FCA
• Team members without finance backgrounds able to run day-to-day reconciliations

Introduction

Centtrip is an award-winning fintech providing treasury, foreign exchange and payment solutions for organisations managing internationally mobile teams and assets, from the world's top music acts to the largest superyachts, processing over £1billion in transactions each year.

Jim Warner, Centtrip's COO, first worked with Aurum over two decades ago, so when Centtrip launched, he knew it would be the right fit:

When we first set the business up, we knew that we needed a reconciliation tool as part of the infrastructure straight away

Jim Warner, COO, Centtrip

The Challenge

Centtrip began with one bank account, one ledger and 15 currencies, but decided to build for scale from the start.

At the forecasted growth, the team would have had to manually extract data, run Excel lookups, and conduct multiple checks with multiple eyes needed on each process at month end, leaving no time for exception management or analysis. With previous experience of using Aurum, Jim knew that automation would be the key to sustainability and looked to employ the solution in anticipation of this growth.

As we were building our own platform out, we had the technical capability to think about building these things ourselves. But I knew that Aurum's solution existed and that it would work for us….a well-tested, proven solution'

Jim Warner, COO,Centtrip

The Solution

Thirteen years on, the business works with four banking providers, two ledger systems, multiple different data structures, and a far more varied mix of transaction types, and so Aurum has been tailored to support these demands as they’ve increased.

The arrival of CASS15 has particularly raised the bar for month-end reporting across the industry. Centtrip saw the regulation as an opportunity to strengthen its processes and exceed the required standards.

To meet the CASS 15 deadlines, the Aurum team worked with Jim in real time, sitting down daily to refine the reconciliation process together rather than working from a lengthy specification.

Pre-programmed matching rules protect accuracy, preventing accidental matches so the team can move through the bulk of the work quickly and focus on exceptions with ease.

Aurum now completes the following:

• Reconciles Centtrip's ledgers against its banks and payment providers
• Produces the daily CASS reconciliations required for safeguarding
• Performs all client money calculations back into sterling equivalent, with a full audit trail ready for the FCA

When the FCA come knocking on the door, we can produce the rationale behind what we've done and how we've done it, with the full audit trail

Jim Warner, COO,Centtrip

The Results

It's already taken what I would say was probably a four day process down to less than one.

Jim Warner, COO,Centtrip

• Month-end reporting reduced from around four days to less than one
• Additional headcount avoided through recent enhancements
• A team member with no finance background now performs most daily reconciliations
• More flexible recruitment, as specialist qualifications are not required
• Time freed to focus on delivering a great service to customers

You don't have to be a finance person per se to operate the system, as long as you understand the basics.

Jim Warner, COO,Centtrip

The Future

Over 13 years, Aurum has scaled alongside Centtrip, and there is more to come, with further refinements to month-end reporting already underway. When asked to describe Aurum in three words, Jim kept it simple: smart, effective and agile.

That kind of flexibility and ability to evolve and change things has been really useful for us.

Jim Warner, COO,Centtrip

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