Ninety minutes a day does not sound like much.

Run the arithmetic and it becomes roughly 390 hours a year. That is close to ten working weeks. Ten weeks of teams stuck in the mundane task of comparing figures and ensuring every Visa transaction the bank processed actually landed where it should have.

One leading Ghanaian bank did that math. What they found was uncomfortable enough to act on.

The throwback story

The bank’s recon team made mistakes. Not because they were careless, but because no human matches thousands of transactions line by line, day after day, without eventually slipping. Every slip had to be found, investigated and corrected, which consumed more hours still. Work fell behind. And as reconciliation fell behind, reporting fell with it.

That is the moment a productivity issue quietly became an operational issue. The figures were eventually corrected. But eventually was not a standard the regulator, board and auditor were taking lightly.

The bank's leadership put it plainly to themselves: they were spending significant resources, both financial and personnel, simply correcting errors that should never have occurred.

What they did about it

They did not replace the core banking system. They did not restructure the department. They did not spend months on a transformation program.

They handed the work to software robots in just a matter of weeks.

Ninety minutes became six.

Error rates fell by over 99%. The process now runs overnight and on weekends, without anyone staying behind to run it. Reports still reach a senior manager for review and sign off, exactly as before, so the control environment remained fully intact. What changed was that the manual effort prior to the sign off simply stopped existing.

The bank's leadership now describes the automation as a guardian of their operational standards. Currently, every step is executed with a complete audit trail behind it. And the financial case is not small. Across the bank's wider automation program, projected savings run to roughly GHS 400,000.

Why this should interest you specifically

Reconciliation is the one process no financial institution (banks, insurers, savings and loans, fintechs etc.) can avoid. Cards. Settlements. Suspense accounts. Monthly reconciliation reports. Every financial institution runs some version of it, and most still run it the way this bank did: several data sources, one master spreadsheet, and a team working late.

If that is your operation, the cost is already sitting inside error corrections, delayed reporting and risk you have not priced yet. It just never appears as a line item.

Knowing what this actually costs will only take one hour.

Two straightforward next steps:

1. Read the full account. We have documented the entire journey: what the process looked like before, precisely what changed, and what the bank's leadership says about the outcome. If you lead a finance, operations or technology function, you will recognize your own institution in it almost immediately.

Click to read the full case study

2. Find out what it would take in yours. In a complimentary one-hour Process Discovery Session, our automation specialist reviews how your reconciliation runs today and gives you a short list of the processes where automation would deliver the fastest ROI.

Book your free session here

About ECL

ECL is an ISO-certified professional services firm that provides world-class IT solutions including Artificial Intelligence (AI), Business Process Automation (BPA), Cyber Resilience, Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure, Backup and Recovery and Software Development that keep businesses ahead of the competition.

Trusted by leaders in banking, finance, insurance, and oil & gas and beyond, ECL combines enterprise-grade technology from global partners with the expertise of our internationally trained team. Our approach merges deep local insight with world-class solutions to fuel sustainable growth.

Headquartered in Tema, Ghana, with an expanding presence in Monrovia, Liberia, ECL is keen on offering 24/7 fanatical support, ensuring our clients not only succeed today but always stay relevant.

Ready to elevate your business? Contact us today: solutions@ecl-global.com  / +233506045005

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