Enterprise Software Development in Dublin

Financial Services / Banking

An IFSC-based financial institution (European subsidiary of a global bank, EUR 18B total assets, 450 employees, CBI-regulated) managed regulatory reporting through a combination of legacy systems, Excel spreadsheets, and manual processes. The institution submitted 38 different regulatory returns to the CBI, ECB, and other European regulators, requiring data from 12 source systems. The problems: (1) Data quality -- each regulatory return required data extraction, transformation, and reconciliation, with 40% of submissions requiring last-minute corrections due to data inconsistencies between source systems. The CBI had flagged data quality as a supervisory concern. (2) Timeline pressure -- the team of 14 regulatory reporting staff spent the final week before each submission deadline in a manual reconciliation sprint, regularly working weekends. Two key staff members had resigned citing burnout. (3) Audit trail -- regulators increasingly required evidence of data lineage (showing exactly how reported figures were derived from source data). The manual Excel-based process could not provide this traceability. (4) Change management -- when reporting requirements changed (which happened frequently with evolving EBA standards and CBI guidance), modifications took 3-6 months to implement across the manual process chain. (5) The CBI had communicated that it expected the institution to materially improve its regulatory reporting infrastructure within 12 months as part of its PRISM assessment.

We built an automated regulatory reporting platform over 20 weeks: (1) Data Integration Layer -- connected to all 12 source systems (core banking, treasury, risk, general ledger, securities, derivatives, collateral management, and others) through a standardized data extraction and transformation pipeline. Each data point carried lineage metadata tracing it from source system through every transformation to the final reported figure. Data quality rules validated consistency across source systems at the point of extraction, catching discrepancies before they reached the reporting stage. (2) Regulatory Rules Engine -- reporting requirements for each of the 38 returns were codified in a configurable rules engine. When EBA or CBI modified reporting requirements, changes were implemented in the rules engine configuration rather than in code -- reducing the change implementation time from 3-6 months to 2-4 weeks. The rules engine maintained version history, enabling the institution to demonstrate compliance with requirements as they existed at each submission date. (3) Automated Report Generation -- regulatory returns were generated automatically from the integrated data, with human review and approval workflows before submission. The approval workflow included four-eyes review, sign-off by the Head of Finance, and audit-ready documentation of who reviewed, approved, and submitted each return. (4) Reconciliation and Validation -- automated reconciliation checks identified discrepancies between related returns (e.g., balance sheet figures consistent across COREP, FINREP, and statistical returns). Validation rules based on EBA validation taxonomy flagged errors before submission, and trend analysis identified unusual movements requiring investigation. (5) CBI-Ready Reporting -- the platform generated regulatory returns in the required formats (XBRL for European returns, Excel for CBI statistical returns), maintained submission audit trails, and produced data lineage documentation for supervisory inquiries.

Data quality improved dramatically: submission corrections decreased from 40% to 4% of returns. The CBI acknowledged the improvement in its next supervisory assessment and removed data quality from the institution's risk register. Reporting efficiency transformed: the regulatory reporting team was reduced from 14 to 8 staff (through natural attrition), with the remaining team focused on analysis and review rather than data wrangling. Submission preparation decreased from a full week of intensive work to 2 days of review and approval. Regulatory change implementation accelerated: a major EBA reporting change that would have taken 4 months under the old process was implemented in 3 weeks using the rules engine. Data lineage was fully traceable: any reported figure could be traced to its source systems with complete transformation documentation -- satisfying both CBI expectations and internal audit requirements. The institution passed its next CBI PRISM assessment with regulatory reporting explicitly noted as a strength. The institution estimated annual value at EUR 2.4M: EUR 1.0M in staff efficiency (smaller team with higher-value focus), EUR 0.6M in compliance risk reduction (avoided potential CBI supervisory actions), EUR 0.5M in change agility (faster adaptation to evolving requirements), and EUR 0.3M in audit efficiency (reduced time and cost for internal and external audit of regulatory reporting). The platform was extended to support additional European subsidiary reporting requirements.