How Financial Institutions Are Improving CRS Accuracy and Cutting Human Intervention by Over 70%

For years, Common Reporting Standard (CRS) tax due diligence has involved countless hours of careful, highly manual work. Accuracy is essential, reporting errors carry real regulatory and reputational consequences, but achieving that accuracy has often come at the cost of significant human effort and more than the occasional late-night spreadsheet session.

Yet something interesting has been happening across the industry.

Quietly at first, and now at scale, financial institutions are improving CRS accuracy while reducing manual intervention by over 70%. This isn’t about cutting corners. And it isn’t about replacing expertise. It’s about changing how compliance work is designed and delivered.

The traditional CRS challenge

CRS due diligence is deceptively complex.

On paper, the rules are clear. In practice, institutions must navigate:

• Large volumes of onboarding and legacy accounts
• Inconsistent or incomplete customer documentation
• Complex entity and ownership structures
• Evolving regulatory guidance across jurisdictions
• Tight timelines and increasing audit scrutiny

Historically, accuracy has been achieved through layers of manual checks:

• Initial reviews by operations teams, often cross-checking multiple internal systems
• Escalation to tax specialists where necessary
• Quality assurance sampling
• Remediation cycles

This approach works. But it is slow, expensive, difficult to scale, and vulnerable to human fatigue and inconsistency.

Accuracy versus efficiency, a false trade-off

For a long time, firms assumed there was a direct trade-off between accuracy and efficiency.

Increase automation, and accuracy might fall. Increase accuracy, and manual effort must rise. That assumption is now being challenged, and proven wrong.

Leading institutions are discovering that automation, when properly designed and governed, actually improves accuracy. It applies rules consistently. It reduces human error. It flags issues earlier. It creates clearer, more defensible audit trails.

The mindset shift has been subtle but important: moving from viewing automation as a shortcut to treating it as a control.

Where the 70% reduction really comes from

When institutions report cutting human intervention by over 70%, they are not talking about removing humans from the process.

They are redesigning workflows so human expertise is applied only where it genuinely adds value.

By implementing true straight-through processing (STP), many institutions are now achieving STP rates of 70% and higher within CRS workflows.

This is typically achieved through:

• Trusted, rules-based systems that validate tax forms against reliable logic
• A fully digital customer experience
• Pre-population of high-quality internal data
• A sustained focus on data quality
• Automated decisioning that routes only genuine exceptions to manual review

The result is not less control, but more consistent control.

1. Systemic validation instead of manual checklists

Many organisations still rely on manual checklists, Outlook inboxes as workflow tools, and well-used Excel lookups to validate tax forms, particularly for complex entities.

Due diligence can take hours, sometimes days. The opportunity for human error is obvious.

Forward-thinking institutions have replaced this with proven systems capable of validating tax forms quickly and consistently. These systems do not tire after checking hundreds of tax identification numbers or verifying addresses. They apply rules the same way, every time.

Consistency improves. Variability reduces. Accuracy increases.

2. A genuinely digital customer experience

There are still institutions relying on customers to email scanned PDFs, or in some cases paper forms, which must then be digitised before due diligence even begins.

This approach is inefficient, frustrating for customers, and operationally fragile. Errors require restart. OCR corrections consume time. Manual data entry introduces risk. From both an ESG and client experience perspective, it is increasingly hard to justify.

Leading organisations have shifted to fully digital tax form journeys. Customers enter or verify data in structured formats. Rulesets validate compliance in real time. Cross-checks that once took days now occur in milliseconds.

The experience improves. The control environment strengthens.

3. Data pre-population, stop asking for what you already know

Institutions are already required to maintain high-quality KYC and AML data.

The operational breakthrough has been simple: ask customers to verify known, trusted data rather than re-key it from scratch. Names and addresses are pre-filled. Dates of birth do not change. If details have changed, KYC records should already reflect this.

This shift reduces friction, reduces input error, and materially improves straight-through processing rates.

4. Better data, better outcomes

Accuracy is not achieved at the end of the process. It is embedded throughout the data lifecycle.

Leading institutions focus on:

• Clear data standards
• Validation at onboarding
• Structured capture of self-certifications and supporting documentation
• Early identification of inconsistencies or missing information

Automated controls detect anomalies and inconsistencies early. Human review is reserved for genuinely complex or high-risk cases.

Strong governance underpins this approach, with clear ownership of data, documented policies, auditable decision trails, and ongoing quality testing.

Many organisations are also deploying AI capabilities to strengthen control frameworks further, including:

• Automated validation at source
• Cross-document consistency checks
• Anomaly and outlier detection
• Document understanding and data extraction
• Confidence scoring and prioritisation
• Early identification of stale or incomplete data
• Continuous monitoring rather than point-in-time reviews

What once required manual sorting across thousands of files is now largely automated, with specialists focused on the exceptions.

5. Use humans where judgement matters

One of the more counterintuitive outcomes of automation is that accuracy often increases as manual intervention decreases.

When specialists are no longer spread thinly across every file, they can focus properly on complex entity structures, nuanced classifications, and edge cases.

Human judgement becomes more targeted. Errors reduce, not because humans are removed, but because their expertise is applied more effectively.

Regulators are watching, and learning

Regulators are not inherently resistant to automation. If anything, they are increasingly receptive, provided institutions can explain and evidence their approach.

What regulators want to see is:

• Consistency
• Transparency
• Defensibility

Automation that delivers these outcomes is often more robust than opaque manual processes dependent on institutional memory or tribal knowledge.

The cultural shift inside institutions

Technology alone does not deliver a 70% reduction in manual effort.

Successful institutions also redefine roles. Humans oversee rather than repeat. Teams are trained to work alongside automation. Quality is measured, not activity. Judgement is rewarded, not volume. This shift can feel uncomfortable at first. But it is proving essential.

What this means for compliance professionals

Far from making compliance roles redundant, these changes are elevating them.

Tax professionals increasingly focus on interpreting complex cases, refining policy, reviewing AI-supported outputs, and engaging constructively with regulators.

The work becomes less repetitive and more intellectually rewarding, which, in a competitive market, also matters for retention.

Looking ahead

The institutions achieving these results today are setting a clear benchmark.

Over the coming years, we can expect:

• Further reductions in manual intervention
• Greater use of explainable AI
• Increased regulator engagement around technology
• Rising expectations around data quality and governance

What will not change is accountability.

CRS due diligence will always require human judgement. But that judgement no longer needs to sit beneath layers of avoidable manual processing.

Improving accuracy while cutting human intervention by over 70% is not about working faster. It is about working smarter. And for many institutions, that shift is already well underway.

We would love to talk to you more about your current documentation validation process and how our award-winning FATCA and CRS Validation platform may add value to your organisation.

For more information on how our fully automated FATCA and CRS Validation platform can add value to your business, get in touch or request a demo to see it in action.

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