In September 2019 at Sibos in London, SmartStream Technologies unveiled SmartStream AIR, an all-new, cloud-native reconciliations platform that it had been working on for the best part of 18 months in its Innovation Lab in Vienna. SmartStream AIR is designed specifically to allow capital markets firms to manage their reconciliations functions on an ad hoc basis. This research paper charts the progress of the platform, from its inception around the start of 2018 to its launch, and focuses on the new ground it breaks in what is historically a complex, expensive and invariably laborious process within large numbers of capital markets firms. The paper is based on a series of interviews in the fourth quarter of 2019 with four of SmartStream’s key personnel: Haytham Kaddoura, CEO; Andreas Burner, chief innovation officer for blockchain and artificial intelligence; Mark Roth, chief marketing officer; and Robin Hasson, product manager for TLM Reconciliations Premium.
