How Upvest Is Leading AI Adoption in a Multi-Entity Close with Eagl
“One word to describe Eagl is confidence. Confidence in the numbers and the outcomes.”
Upvest is a fast-scaling, Berlin-based fintech. Its API enables banks, fintechs, and wealth platforms to offer stock, ETF, and fund investing, while Upvest handles the trading, custody, and regulated infrastructure behind it.
Managing high transaction volumes in a regulated environment
Because its entities operate under strict regulations, the finance team must navigate rigorous compliance requirements across multiple legal entities.
As Upvest scaled, the primary bottleneck was not complexity, but sheer volume. Repetitive monthly tasks multiplied across entities, increasing manual workloads and the risk of human error.
Key pain points in their financial close included:
- Inefficient bank reconciliation: The existing system relied on brittle, rule-based matching. When these rules failed, accountants spent up to an hour a day manually booking transactions.
- Limited VAT oversight: Due to time constraints, VAT reviews were only conducted manually above a specific monetary threshold, leaving smaller, high-risk items unexamined.
- Manual accruals: Booking and reversing accruals by hand created a persistent risk of missed reversals, leading to double-counted costs on the P&L.
- Spreadsheet tracking: Close tasks were tracked in spreadsheets across multiple entities.
Seamless AI agents built for existing workflows
Instead of introducing yet another siloed software tool, Upvest integrated Eagl's AI agents directly into their existing systems and workflows, including NetSuite and their treasury platform.
- The VAT agent: Deeply audits transactions far below the previous manual threshold. In its first run, it proactively flagged discrepancies ranging from incorrect VAT applications to an intercompany invoice booked to the wrong entity, and linked them directly back to NetSuite.
- The reconciliation agent: Uses live bank data from Upvest's treasury system to match transactions autonomously, eliminating the need to maintain rigid, legacy rules.
- The accruals agent: Catches unreversed accruals, applies the correct cost recognition, and runs the cutoff analysis, then books and reverses automatically to keep the P&L accurate without manual intervention.
- Centralized architecture: A single digital checklist now runs the close across all its legal entities, with many of its tasks prepared automatically by the agents.
“Many of the activities we performed very manually can now be automated. This shifts our accountants' role from transactional preparation to strategic control, allowing them to focus on analyzing and explaining the numbers rather than just compiling them.”
Toni KrügerVP of Accounting & Reporting, UpvestA faster close and elevated accounting roles
The impact of implementing Eagl was immediate, addressing Upvest's most critical operational vulnerabilities:
- Proactive error detection: Accounting errors that previously slipped beneath thresholds, or were only caught at the end of the month, are now caught proactively and resolved early.
- Time reclaimed: Eliminated an hour of manual bank booking per day.
- Centralized oversight: A chaotic, spreadsheet-driven close has been consolidated into a unified, transparent process across all its entities.
Ultimately, the greatest value for Upvest isn't just the time saved, it is how that time is reinvested. Upvest's accounting team has transitioned into internal controllers who actively analyze financial data. For a highly regulated fintech, this provides the ultimate benefit: a swift, compliant financial close backed by data they can fully trust.