Duco Alternative: Reconciliation for Firms That Hold Customer Money

Key takeaways

• Duco describes itself as the agentic Operations platform for financial services, automating data preparation, reconciliation and exception management for banks, asset managers, brokers and other capital markets firms.
• Duco states that it processes 20 billion or more transactions a month, has 10,000+ users in 30+ countries and is used by 7 of the top 20 banks.
• The regulatory reporting Duco describes is reconciliation of transaction reports sent to trade repositories under regimes such as EMIR, MiFID II, CFTC, ASIC, MAS and HKMA, which is a different job from safeguarding returns.
• A firm that holds customer money must also show, for each licensed entity and currency, that protected funds cover what it owes customers, and report that to each regulator, such as the FCA every month or state regulators through the NMLS call report each quarter.
• Duco does not publish pricing, and its public pages do not describe safeguarding returns, positions held per entity and currency without offset, funding forecasts or dedicated read-only auditor access.

What is Duco, in brief?

Duco is a cloud-based data automation platform that prepares, reconciles and manages exceptions in financial data, used mainly by banks, asset managers, asset servicers, brokers and other capital markets firms.

What does Duco do?

Duco takes data from any source and format, cleans it, matches it under rules the customer sets, and routes what does not match to the right team, with AI agents assisting and people approving.

The Duco platform page describes three working modules on one set of controls. Data preparation ingests structured and unstructured files by API, SFTP or manual upload and normalises them, so that, for example, one file's dates and currency codes line up with another's. Reconciliation matches records with user-set tolerances (an allowed difference, such as a rounding amount, below which two records still count as matched), roll-ups, fuzzy matching and multi-pass processing, and Duco states it can process 1 billion transactions a day. Exception management brings breaks from several sources into one screen with workflow, ownership, ageing and audit.

Duco is precise about the role of AI. Its home page says the model "proposes insight and changes in plain terms. It never modifies your data", that a suggestion becomes a rule only when a person signs it off, with the decision written to the audit log, and that the platform then runs the approved rules deterministically, meaning the same input always gives the same output. Its data preparation page adds four-eye approval (a second person must approve) on configuration changes.

Use cases span most of a capital markets firm. Duco lists cash account reconciliations, custody, OTC confirmations, exchange-traded derivatives clearing, collateral, corporate actions, client data and insurance bordereaux. For crypto, it supports reconciliations of the internal book of record against the blockchain, custodians and liquidity providers, and says it handles values such as ETH to 18 decimal places. Its published client stories include payments firms: Currencycloud and Mama Money, which runs daily cash balance reconciliations on Duco.

Where is Duco strong?

Duco is strong at high-volume, many-format reconciliation that business users can build and change themselves, inside a controlled and well-documented environment trusted by large banks.

• Matching quality: tolerances, roll-ups, fuzzy logic and multi-pass rules to cut false breaks, which are differences caused by formatting or timing rather than real errors.
• Self-service build: Duco's no-code Natural Rule Language lets operations staff set up reconciliations without IT; Currencycloud reports building its first reconciliation in two hours.
• Breadth: one platform across cash, securities, derivatives, crypto, collateral and reference data, so a large firm can retire several point solutions.
• Transaction reporting controls: preconfigured reconciliations for EMIR, MiFID II, SFTR, CFTC, ASIC, MAS and HKMA regimes, and Best Transaction Reporting Solution at the A-Team Group RegTech Insight Awards Europe 2024, as Duco reports.
• Governed AI: agents propose, people approve, every agent action is logged and attributable, and the rules engine stays deterministic.
• Security and scale: ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type 2, as stated on its trust and security page, with 20bn+ transactions processed a month.

A bank, asset manager or broker that needs to reconcile large, varied data sets across many counterparties, or to control its trade reporting, should take Duco seriously. Our comparison of reconciliation platforms sets out the wider field.

Is Duco's regulatory reporting the same as safeguarding reporting?

No: the regulatory reporting Duco describes checks transaction reports sent to trade repositories, while a firm holding customer money reports whether that money is protected.

Duco's transaction and regulatory reporting page lists regimes including MiFID II, SFTR, CSDR, EMIR EU and UK, MMFR, CFTC and Dodd-Frank, FINRA, CSA, ASIC, APRA, MAS and HKMA. Its ASIC Rewrite page explains the purpose: to help "ensure that the data you're sending to the Trade Repository is accurate, complete and in the right format". A trade repository is a central database to which firms report their derivatives and securities trades. These controls reconcile what was reported against internal trade records.

Safeguarding reporting answers a different question. Safeguarding is the legal duty to keep customers' money separate from the firm's own and protected if the firm fails. The return to a payments or money transmission regulator states how much the firm owes its customers, where the protecting funds or assets are held, and whether the second covers the first. The same regulator names, ASIC, MAS and HKMA, can therefore appear on both sides of a comparison while meaning entirely different reports.

What does a firm holding customer money need beyond matching data sets?

It needs the matched data turned, every day and for each licence, into a protected position: what is owed to customers, what is held to protect it, and the difference, under that licence's rules.

The rules differ by regulator. In Hong Kong, the HKMA guideline for stored value facility licensees requires the float (customers' stored balances) to be segregated from the licensee's own funds, the users' ledger to reflect the total float "at all times", and any "material unresolved discrepancies identified in any reconciliation" to be reported to the HKMA immediately. It also says a mismatch between the currency of the float and the currency of the assets protecting it "is generally not allowed", except between Hong Kong and US dollars, unless effective currency risk controls are in place. In Canada, the Bank of Canada guideline says, as best practice, that a payment service provider should take daily measures to identify shortfalls, must investigate the root cause of each one immediately, and must report them in its annual report.

In the UK, the FCA's PS25/12 rules for payment and e-money institutions came into force on 7 May 2026. In the US, each state's money transmission law sets a permissible investments test, permissible investments being the classes of safe asset a state allows to count against what the firm owes. In the Netherlands, DNB's March 2026 review of exit plans reminded payment and e-money institutions that "a license can only be handed in when all customer funds have been paid out". Each of these depends on knowing, per entity and per currency, exactly what is owed and what is held.

Which regulator returns depend on the reconciled figures?

Each regulator asks for its own return or evidence on its own timetable, and every figure in it should come from the same reconciled position the firm manages daily.

The NMLS Section III instructions show how specific a return can be. Line PI120 reports total outstanding transmission liability, the money received for transmission and not yet paid out. Line PI130 reports the average daily outstanding liability for the quarter, so a firm needs a reliable figure for every day, not only the last. "Other investments" above 20% of the permissible investments subtotal require an explanatory note, and amounts pledged or restricted are reported separately on line PI110. In Singapore, the MAS auditor report form lists, as a ground for a qualified conclusion, that a major payment institution has not met "the requirement to safeguard customers' money, as set out in section 23 of the PS Act".

What does a currency offset hide inside one entity?

An entity can look fully covered when its currencies are added together while it is short in one of them.

Worked example. Nexus Payments' Dutch e-money institution holds customer balances in euros and US dollars. It owes customers EUR 20.00 million and holds EUR 20.50 million in its safeguarding account. It owes USD 6.00 million and holds USD 5.60 million. A treasury dashboard converts euros at 1.10 dollars per euro and shows one total.

The euro excess, EUR 0.50 million or USD 0.55 million at 1.10, more than offsets the dollar gap of USD 0.40 million, so the total shows a USD 0.15 million surplus. The dollar customers are still under-protected by USD 0.40 million, and whether a euro surplus may count against them depends on the regulator's rules on currency mismatch. A position held per currency shows the gap the day it opens, and the top-up of USD 0.40 million can be proposed, approved by two people and sent to the bank as a standard payment file.

The same logic applies across entities, which our guide to multi-entity reconciliation covers, and across fiat and stablecoin. A platform that settles merchants in USDC as well as local currency owes obligations in both, and each needs its own covered position; see stablecoins.

How do Duco and Safeheld compare?

Duco is a broad data automation and reconciliation platform for capital markets operations; Safeheld is narrower, built around the protected position and regulator returns of each licensed entity that holds customer money.

"Not stated publicly" means the point does not appear on Duco's public pages as at 26 October 2026, not that the capability is absent. Ask Duco to show it on your own data.

What should a firm holding customer money test in any Duco alternative?

Test the regulated outcome on your own data, because every serious platform matches records well.

• Show the protected position for each licensed entity and each currency, with no netting between them.
• Apply each licence's rules: the UK safeguarding regime, each US state's permissible investments test, Canada's trust or insurance arrangements, Hong Kong's float and currency rules.
• Produce the UK monthly safeguarding return and Section III of the NMLS call report, including average daily liability, from the same figures as the daily position.
• Hold fiat and stablecoin obligations and assets in one view, each covered in its own asset.
• Raise a shortfall the day it appears and record the cause, the person who investigated it and the evidence.
• Forecast funding needs per entity and currency, and require more than one approver before money moves.
• Show the position for any past date exactly as it stood on that date.
• Give auditors, independent reviewers and safeguarding banks read-only access, so they can check figures without depending on the team that produced them.
• Run alongside the current process for a full reporting cycle before cut-over.

Our guides to evaluating a Simetrik alternative and an AutoRek alternative, and to choosing payment reconciliation software, set out further questions to ask any vendor.

How does Safeheld help?

Safeheld reconciles bank statements, processor and partner reports, ledgers, custody and blockchain wallet records every day, and holds one position per legal entity in its own currency, never offset against another entity, agreeing back to a group total. Funding needs are forecast over 24 hours, 7 days and 30 days, and top-ups are approved by up to three people and paid by a standard payment file.

Breaks are raised the day they appear, and the UK monthly safeguarding return, NMLS call report packs and packs for the Bank of Canada, DNB, MAS, HKMA and ASIC are prepared from the same reconciled figures, with audit packs and read-only access for auditors and banks.

Frequently asked questions

What is Duco?

Duco is a cloud-based data automation platform for financial services. It describes itself as the agentic Operations platform for financial services, automating data preparation, reconciliation and exception management, and is used mainly by banks, asset managers, asset servicers, brokers and other capital markets firms.

What are the alternatives to Duco?

It depends on the need. For high-volume reconciliation across capital markets data, firms compare other enterprise reconciliation platforms. For firms that hold customer money and must prove it is protected and file safeguarding returns, firms look at regulatory reconciliation platforms such as Safeheld.

Does Duco publish its pricing?

No. As at 26 October 2026, Duco's website does not publish pricing and offers a demo on request.

How does Duco use AI?

Duco states that its AI proposes changes in plain terms and never modifies customer data. A suggestion becomes a rule only when a person signs it off, the decision is written to the audit log, and the approved rules then run deterministically.

Does Duco handle regulatory reporting?

Duco provides reconciliations and controls for transaction reporting to trade repositories under regimes such as EMIR, MiFID II, SFTR, CFTC, ASIC, MAS and HKMA. Its public pages do not mention the UK monthly safeguarding return or the NMLS MSB Call Report.

Is Duco used by payment companies?

Yes. Duco's published client stories include Currencycloud, an international payments firm, and Mama Money, a cross-border money transfer firm that runs daily cash balance reconciliations on Duco.

Why is matching data sets not enough for safeguarding?

Matching shows whether records agree. Safeguarding requires the funds or assets held to protect customers to cover what is owed to them, under each licence's rules, for each legal entity and currency, with the result reported to each regulator.

Can Duco and a safeguarding platform be used together?

Yes. A firm can use Duco for broad operational reconciliations and trade reporting controls, and a regulatory reconciliation platform to calculate each licensed entity's protected position and prepare safeguarding returns, provided both work from the same source records.

References

• Duco, The Duco platform
• Duco, Reconciliation
• Duco, Transaction and regulatory reporting reconciliations
• FCA Handbook, SUP 16.14A Safeguarding return: safeguarding institutions
• NMLS, MSB Call Report Section III: Permissible Investments Report
• Bank of Canada, Safeguarding end-user funds: supervisory guideline (PDF)
• HKMA, Guideline on Supervision of Stored Value Facility Licensees (PDF)
• MAS, Form 4: Auditor report for a licensed payment service provider (PDF)

About Safeheld

Safeheld is reconciliation and regulatory reporting software for regulated firms that hold client money across countries, currencies and regulators, in fiat and stablecoin. It holds one position per legal entity and currency, raises breaks the day they appear, and prepares regulatory returns and audit packs from the same reconciled figures. To discuss your reconciliation and safeguarding operations, contact us at safeheld.com/contact.

This article is general information on reconciliation software for firms that hold customer money and is not legal or regulatory advice.