{"id":3878,"date":"2025-08-18T13:02:18","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T12:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kanipayments.com\/?p=3878"},"modified":"2025-08-18T13:02:18","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T12:02:18","slug":"kani-paymentsjournal-building-a-compliant-back-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kanipayments.com\/company\/newsroom\/kani-paymentsjournal-building-a-compliant-back-office\/","title":{"rendered":"Kani | PaymentsJournal: Building a compliant back office"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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PaymentsJournal recently invited Roger Binks, Chief Commercial Officer at Kani, to join James Wester, Co-Head of Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, for a discussion on why reconciliation and reporting are moving from \u201cback office\u201d to business-critical.<\/p>\n

Originally featured in PaymentsJournal<\/a>, this adapted article distils practical takeaways for compliance and operations leaders to modernise reconciliation and reporting as regulatory scrutiny intensifies. The discussion covers the state of the back office, the pitfalls of manual workarounds and concrete steps to make reconciliation and reporting automated, traceable and audit-ready.<\/p>\n

A traceable and consistent baseline<\/h2>\n

Research from Kani found notable trends among payment leaders<\/a>: just over a quarter of respondents said their firms were using fully automated reconciliation tools, while many still relied on spreadsheet-based solutions for this complex process.<\/p>\n

Nearly two-thirds of respondents also reported frequent data errors during reconciliation\u2014errors that are expected to become more expensive and time-consuming as regulators continue to raise the bar for compliance in the payments industry<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe regulatory environment is becoming way more prescriptive than it ever has been,\u201d Binks said. \u201cReconciliation and reporting outputs not only have to be consistent, but they have to be traceable. If you\u2019re having a manual process in there, the workarounds that you have to put in place to make that traceability consistent is really tough.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the UK, the FCA is extending operational resilience requirements into payments,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat this means is daily reconciliations, real-time controls and clearly documented processes are going to be mandatory. They\u2019re going to be the sort of baseline of everyone\u2019s business.\u201d<\/p>\n

As compliance tasks continue to grow, they add pressure to already strained operations. The report found that roughly 80% of respondents often miss reporting deadlines.<\/p>\n

These difficulties will mount for organisations that don\u2019t take steps to modernise.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings like reconciliation, reporting and compliance are things that we all talk about and we have for a long time,\u201d Wester said. \u201cWe have talked about workarounds and band-aids and fixes and manual processes that are employed, while we also know that regulatory compliance and all of the things that that entails, it\u2019s only getting more complex.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a known issue, we all talk about it, and yet it continues to be something in 2025 that we are still talking about,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m almost sad about it. It\u2019s almost like, \u2018When do we start fixing some of this stuff, especially when we know that regulation and compliance are not going to get any less complex in the future?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Saving 700 hours<\/h2>\n

One reason manual processes and reporting issues have lingered is that they haven\u2019t been the priority they should have.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever you see regulation or some type of mandate for the way a report must be submitted\u2014or anything like that\u2014a financial institution, a bank, or a business, they often look at what they must do and they work back from there,\u201d Wester said. \u201cIt\u2019s almost as though they try to find the least efficient way to do it. To me, I think we look at it the wrong way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead of viewing compliance as a chore, organisations should recognise that the reporting process produces a critical output: data. Through this lens, reconciliation and reporting become valuable assets\u2014ones that can deliver dividends by offering deep insights into operations.<\/p>\n

Beyond increased visibility, a modernised reporting process also offers tangible efficiency gains.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe asked some questions around how long it took for people to prepare data\u2014just getting it ready for the reconciliation process,\u201d Binks said. \u201cWe found that the average UK payments business spends about three hours preparing data before reconciliations can even happen. With that mandatory daily reconciliation process being a requirement\u2014if you work that out\u2014it\u2019s about 700 hours every year spent just preparing data.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThink of what you could do with 700 hours a year in terms of other work,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s some stark numbers in there which we can\u2019t ignore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everything is a dev ticket<\/h2>\n

As organisations begin updating their back-office processes, many will face the age-old buy-or-build dilemma. However, with the compliance bar rising rapidly and shifting daily, companies that choose to build solutions face significant challenges.<\/p>\n

One of the main hurdles to in-housing is ensuring the organisation has the right resources in place\u2014starting with personnel. But maintaining a dedicated compliance team presents its own set of issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt depends upon the way the internal organisation is structured, which is oftentimes around a particular group or a particular person or a particular unit that\u2019s built a certain way,\u201d Wester said. \u201cJust training is usually very inefficient. If that person ends up leaving\u2014if the person in accounting retires and they were the one that knew how everything was put together\u2014then it becomes a process of unpacking what they did to make that process work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond assembling the right team, organisations must also possess the technical expertise and engineering capacity to develop an in-house solution. This is often a struggle: 60% of surveyed firms with internal solutions reported that resource constraints directly impacted their business growth and agility.<\/p>\n

Many of these firms also noted that generating reports was too time-consuming, and that operating systems across multiple payments channels remained a challenge. Additionally, maintaining an in-house solution is a continuous process, one that many simply aren\u2019t equipped to take on.<\/p>\n

As a result of these challenges, few businesses are pursuing the in-house route. In Kani\u2019s survey, less than 10% of respondents said their firm had built its own system.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019ve in-housed it, all of those different changes\u2014even if they\u2019re internal requests\u2014everything becomes a dev ticket,\u201d Binks said. \u201cEverything becomes an item on a list that someone\u2019s got to deal with. If that\u2019s not your main business, suddenly you\u2019re in the business of building and running a reconciliation team, and that\u2019s not really your core.\u201d<\/p>\n

The back-office holy grail<\/h2>\n

Despite challenges with in-house processes, many organisations continue to lean on them\u2014often because they\u2019re unaware of better alternatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s one of the problems for people who are in compliance or operations\u2014they don\u2019t know what they don\u2019t know sometimes in terms of what is available,\u201d Wester said. \u201cBut also I think that sometimes operations and compliance people are not good advocates for their own needs. Sometimes they\u2019re not tied to revenue, so building a business case for something like a solution in the back office can be a little bit difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

Organisations that begin exploring potential solutions can uncover powerful benefits. Platforms such as Kani manage every aspect of the compliance process, including end-to-end automated reconciliation<\/a>, submission-ready reports and iron-clad audit trails.<\/p>\n

Another advantage of partnering with a provider is gaining access to the collective knowledge and experience across their entire portfolio. This enables them to stay current with regulatory changes and make proactive improvements to the platform.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about operational agility,\u201d Binks said. \u201cThis isn\u2019t about just speed, it\u2019s about control, traceability and repeatability in a process that you can trust. If you can get that, then you\u2019re in a good place, but it\u2019s a challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI would think about getting off Excel and manual systems,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s time to bite the bullet. People just need to work out when, and accept the fact that it\u2019s coming at some point. The back-office efficiency Holy Grail is there\u2014you don\u2019t have to go and build it yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n<\/section>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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