Nostro / Cash Break Agent
Investigates and clears nostro, vostro and cash reconciliation breaks.
Owns the unmatched cash. Reads the nostro statement, finds why the ledger and the agent bank disagree (timing, a missing entry, an FX fee booked separately), and clears the break or posts the correcting journal. Clears continuously as statements land; above-band journals route to an oversight agent.
Authority
Act within policy
Team role
Completes a defined task
Handoffs
Named collaborators
The role
What it owns and where its authority ends
Desk
Reconciliation
Desk workflow
Statement ingestion, then automated matching, then exception (break) generation, then break investigation, then resolution, write-off or journal. Matching engines clear the bulk; the unmatched tail is where investigation concentrates.
Collaboration
Calls several specialists in parallel
Decision boundary
Acts only within an explicit policy, permission and escalation boundary.
Systems and capabilities involved
Reconciliation engine (Intellimatch/SmartStream)
Nostro statements (MT940/camt)
General ledger
post correcting journals
Payments + core banking
Oversight recon agent
gates above-band journals
Handoffs
What this role gives and receives
Capabilities offered
The handoffs name the next owner or specialist and the work that moves between them.
Handoff to
Receives from
Receives from
Context
What the role needs to do the work
- Current work
- The unmatched item, the candidate counter-entries, the lean.
- Prior interactions
- Prior breaks on this account; recurring timing patterns.
- Policies and reference
- Cash-management conventions, FX-fee booking rules, value-date logic.
- Working method
- Match-and-clear playbooks per break type.
Illustrative workflow
How the work moves
Starting point
Nostro break: $48,210 debit on the agent statement, no ledger match.
- 01
Scan the ledger for a near-match by amount, currency and value date.
- 02
Find a same-amount entry booked one day later, a value-date timing diff.
- 03
Confirm the FX-fee component ($210) booked to a separate account.
Result
Auto-clears the timing break and matches the fee entry; logs the rationale. Anything ambiguous or above tolerance routes to the oversight agent with the analysis done.
Checks and boundaries
What must be tested or reviewed
- 01Tolerance guardrail: write-offs and journals above band route to an oversight agent instead of auto-posting.
- 02Agent-as-judge sampling of cleared breaks vs. the affirmed gold set.
- 03Aged-break monitoring; anything past the recon SLA escalates.
- 04Every journal posted carries an immutable rationale linked to the source entries.
Human authority
Acts only within an explicit policy, permission and escalation boundary.
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