Aurum did for us what others said was impossible to do.
Swinton Insurance, part of the Atlanta Group, is a broker that offers insurance products, helping customers manage and find the right policies for them. Every day they handle a large number of payments, of various sizes, to and from customers and insurance companies.
With these transactions taking place frequently and via various methods, paired with the fact that they must comply with CASS rules, finance operations at Swinton Insurance must operate at an extremely high level of accuracy. That’s why for 10 years, they have worked in partnership with Aurum Solutions.
The solution
Prior to working with Aurum, Swinton Insurance was operating a less efficient automated reconciliation solution that lacked functionalities they required. With the versatility to import any form of data, rapid speeds, and the willingness of Aurum’s support team to design bespoke solutions when required, Swinton Insurance could guarantee that their reconciliation was robust for the long-term.
We’ve built up a strong relationship over the years with everyone at Aurum – especially the support team - which is priceless.
Judith Horrocks, Finance Operations Manager
Swinton Insurance
The results
With Aurum implemented, the finance team at Swinton Insurance experienced immediate improvements. Primarily these were noticeable in two main areas – speed and access to granular data.
Speed
Swift completion of bank reconciliations is especially important for Swinton Insurance because every day they handle thousands of card transactions. Fortunately, in just a few minutes, Aurum imports data from payment providers, imports bank statements, and automatically completes reconciliations, typically leaving less than a dozen transactions to investigate. This was a significant efficiency improvement.
We can now get more out of our data, and do so quicker than before, making our jobs both easier and more impactful.
Jayne Logan, Finance Operations Team Leader
Swinton Insurance
Business strategy
The improvements that Aurum provided to Swinton Insurance weren’t a one-off. In fact, over the years, additional benefits have been a regular occurrence, proving that Aurum is a solution which can adapt and keep firms ahead of the game.
For example, the ability to drill down into data within Aurum has time and time again enabled the business to easily analyse the number of transactions they handle and their associated costs, leading to better informed business decisions.
We now have so many different filters, making it easy to extract the specific data that we are looking for in just a few clicks. What used to be a big job is now simple.
Jayne Logan, Finance Operations Team Leader
Swinton Insurance
Saving money
Another example is Aurum introducing a completely new value-adding reconciliation to the operations at Swinton Insurance. On a monthly basis, Swinton Insurancehas the need to reconcile tens of thousands of transactions with key 3rd parties. Despite it previously being thought that a reconciliation of this type was not possible, through the strength of Aurum’s functionality and development of complex matching logic, this reconciliation is now fully functional, swift, and accurate. As a result, discrepancies are spotted easily and corrected.
Aurum did for us what others said was impossible to do which means we now have certainty of transaction accuracy.
Judith Horrocks, Financial Operations Manager
Swinton Insurance
Audits
In addition, Aurum also becomes a powerful tool when work takes place with external stakeholders such as auditors.
For instance, auditors will frequently ask to see the transactional history of a sample of client accounts – a process made easy by Aurum given the complete audit trail of all transactions which pass through it. As a result, Swinton Insurance can easily search for transactional information that auditors request from them.
One of the big things I say when training others on Aurum is to not worry if you do anything wrong because it is easily fixable - we can roll back, we can load reversing items, we can unreconcile. When learning a new system, it is frightening to do anything wrong but with Aurum there is no need to be worried.
Jayne Logan, Financial Operations Team Leader
Swinton Insurance
The future
Aurum helping Swinton Insurance improve efficiency in their finance operations has meant benefits not just for their systems but also their people. Now, time can be spent away from transactional matching and reconciliations and instead can be focused on value-added tasks. This includes upskilling other members of the team and expanding the use of Aurum its use across other parts of the Atlanta Group.
The potential with Aurum really is unlimited – it's not just a bank reconciliation – we regularly let other firms within the group know about how Aurum can match any two sets of data and they’re instantly excited by its problem-solving abilities.
Jayne Logan, Financial Operations Team Leader
Swinton Insurance
Ultimately, for Swinton Insurance, Aurum is more than simply an automated reconciliation tool. It has proven to be a foundation for creating more possibilities within their financial operations, something which they are now keen to share with others within the Atlanta Group.
Once you get into it and realise what you can do with Aurum, it is quite exciting as it becomes more than a process – it delivers actual benefits.
Judith Horrocks, Financial Operations Manager
Swinton Insurance
