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Bank Statement Analytics

Salient’s New Utility Unlocks Tech-Assisted Bank Statement Analytics

Technology has a gone a long way towards streamlining investigations, but one particular area of evidence has consistently flown under the radar of all the usual forensic tools: bank statements.

“Following the money” using these transactional documents is often a pivotal part of investigations, and yet it has remained an arduous manual process that guzzles both time and resources… until now.

Having seen first-hand the workload involved in wading through hundreds, if not thousands, of bank statements to filter out the noise and identify relevant links and patterns, the Salient team decided it was time to address the shortcomings inherent in manual transaction matching and reconciliation. So we put our heads together to design and build a new investigative utility that would enable bank statements to be collected, ingested, reviewed, analysed and reported on just as quickly and easily as any other electronically sourced information.

We’re excited to announce that this new utility is now available!

Introducing Salient Bank Statement Analytics

How It Works

Bank statements, in the form of PDF or Excel files, are ingested into a dedicated and secure database within Salient’s hosted cloud eDiscovery platform. (OCR can be used to process hardcopy documents if necessary.) The transactional data is then extracted and transformed into a set of records that can be searched, tagged, reviewed and subject to metadata enrichment using Salient’s intuitive eDiscovery tools.

This makes it quick and easy for investigators to interrogate even the most complex financial landscapes, supported by full audit trails to avoid spoliation. The resulting insights can be analysed and reported on independently, or in context as part of a wider eDiscovery investigation linking financial transactions to other Electronically Stored Information (ESI).

Key Capabilities

Using Salient’s Bank Statement Analytics utility, investigators are able to:

  • Summarise inflows, outflows and balances. Reveal big-picture patterns by an entity, category, account, account type and more.
  • Categorise recurring transactions. Exclude known quantities like salaries, bank charges, insurance etc.
  • Isolate transactions of interest. Flag unusual transactions or those that meet specific criteria.
  • Match inflows to outflows between entities. Highlight discrepancies in cash flow.
  • Interactively enrich metadata. Add tags, flags or comments to metadata, including associated documents and asset references.
  • Identify beneficiaries. Automatically identify standard and custom beneficiaries.
  • Compile net worth analyses. Get a complete view of flows and balances, as well as asset lists and KYC documents.
  • Manage documents. Find and review supporting documents and cross-reference ingested documentation with transactional data.

This first iteration of the utility is subject to continuous evolution and extension of its capabilities, which are likely to grow as we refine and expand on its potential. To find out more about specific functionality and/or use cases, please get in touch with us directly.

Game-Changing Benefits

Not having to manually reconcile thousands of transactions significantly reduces the time and cost implications of any investigation, which includes bank statements. It also drastically diminishes the potential for human error, with auditable activity logs to prove proper handling.

Scalable and flexible, the Salient Bank Statement Analytics utility can also be customised to suit specific workflows and accommodates multiple investigators working on the same data.

This utility was created to do much more than just streamline an outdated and unwieldy process, however. Its ability to detect subtle connections and patterns in even the largest and most complex of financial landscapes brings the proverbial “needle in the haystack” far closer than manual investigation methods could ever do.

One more way to be Faster, Sharper and Always Salient.

To find out more about leveraging Bank Statement Analytics in your investigation, get in touch with a Salient expert today.