Who They Are
One.IO is a UK-authorised payment institution (PI) and electronic money institution (EMI) operating under FCA regulations.
Amongst other services, they manage client funds and are required to maintain strict safeguarding protocols to protect client money under MiFID regulations and the Payment Institution (PI) licence framework.
The Problem
One.IO faced the classic reconciliation challenge that plagues most payment institutions:
Daily manual reconciliation burden: Their reconciliation process was time-consuming and complex, involving multiple data feeds (3-4 different banks), legacy macro-enabled spreadsheets, and cross-folder data dependencies that frequently broke.
Fragmented systems: Data came from various sources - SQL servers, end-of-day balances, and APIs - all feeding into Excel with VBA macros that were brittle and prone to failure.
Regulatory pressure: The FCA's new safeguarding regime changes coming in May introduces formalised CAS 15 requirements, significantly increasing auditing complexity.
Resource constraints: They needed a solution that didn't require expensive third-party service providers (which cost £3k+ per month) but also wasn't as rigid as full SQL technical implementations, and which would take scarce coding resources.
How We Helped
Continuum introduced Alteryx to One.io initially as an intermediary reconciliation solution :
Automation with flexibility:Alteryx workflows cleanse and match data from multiple sources, automating the daily reconciliation that previously required hours of manual effort.
Auditor-friendly outputs: Creating Excel-based presentations that auditors and regulators can understand and verify - showing total-to-total comparisons and IBAN-by-IBAN breakdowns all in a single rerunnable process.
Standardised internal reconciliation: Developed a standardised internal reconciliation process to meet upcoming CAS 15 requirements, something most companies in the industry haven't yet tackled.
Beyond reconciliation: Extended Alteryx usage beyond just reconciliations to build a complete billing engine, moving all billing off-platform to invoicing straight from source data, and creating client behaviour dashboards with revenue trends and automated alerts for business attention.
Alteryx combines and reconciles internal and external data sources on demand, ensuring that agreed data is shared with multiple stake holders ;
Dashboards for customer success teams to ensure customer service.
Daily client asset safeguarding reports for regulator and auditors
Billing engine for clients, removing a potential reconciliation issue
Alteryx Auto Insights AI dashboards to turn hidden trends and correlations into client value opportunities
Our client Michael McMullan below gives a flavour of how flexibility around data consumption has allowed them to get creative and build new workflows for utilisation by wider business functions. One example was a new client billing engine workflow in Alteryx, which can read and write directly from/to ONE.io's CRM system.
It is a gratifying demonstration of the value-add and true impact of being able to drive data initiatives when equipped with functional tools...
“With the support of Continuum and the Alteryx Designer, we have been able to rip up legacy processes and quickly imbed new and standardised workflows, with scalability in mind. With the changing regulatory landscape surrounding client money, specifically CASS 15 in the UK, Continuum has played a key role in helping us develop a strong foundation for our bank reconciliations and expanding our FinOps function. Continuum have shared knowledge and access to a tool that assists us in confirming and maintaining the accuracy our books and records.
The accessibility to different types of source data and ability to easily standardise the data has also allowed us to think 'bigger picture'. We have recently taken the Customer Fees calculations from our internal platform and built a billing engine in Alteryx. This has allowed us to maintain pricing model flexibility in a more seamless manner which, ultimately, helps drive revenue growth. I've also noticed much less work on manual spreadsheets with glitchy Excel Macros as we can now read directly from our golden sources sources such as AWS, our CRM tool, and internal databases - all feeding in to neat little workflows.
Next stop is direct API driven integrations to new and existing banking partners on top of other use cases from across the business. This will hugely decrease dependence on our Product and Dev functions who have better stuff to be doing rather than listening to endless requirements from my team. Oh... and the Auto Insights functionality also being a cherry on top. It saves us hours each month summarising the data trends.
In a perfect world, I think Alteryx would be embraced and utilised by dev functions within a company. However, I also see it working well, in practice, as an Operational tool, agnostic to any tech deployments. There's a potential gap to be filled for SMEs like ourselves (ie. Payment Service Providers and Electronic Money Institutions) where Ops teams, Finance functions, and Compliance leaders all can get access to an affordable & scalable solution that can be swiftly implemented & integrated.
"Alteryx is the in-between solution. You've got Excel on one end, you've got full-coded automation built in-house on the other, but there's this interim where finance teams need a fix - not a big technical solution, but something more reliable and flexible than manual macros. That's where Alteryx sits."
Mike McMullan, FinOps Lead - Treasury and Safeguarding Reconciliations, One.IO
The Impact
Regulatory readiness
Passed safeguarding audits by demonstrating reproducible, automated processes that satisfy increasingly onerous FCA requirements.
Operational efficiency
Transformed daily reconciliation from hours of manual work to a push-button process that can be run on demand.
Flexibility and cost control
Avoided expensive third-party reconciliation tools (£3,500/month per system) while maintaining the flexibility to adapt as business needs evolved.
What's Next ?
HubSpot integration: Automating dashboard alerts and task generation directly into HubSpot to enable real-time client monitoring and commercial team action, replacing a current Looker Studio solution.
Broader team adoption: Plans to expand Alteryx training and usage across the organisation as they prepare for the May CAS 15 regulatory changes.