Wolters Kluwer announces cloud-native version of CCH Validate

Wolters Kluwer announced a version of CCH Validate that is now entirely in the cloud. 

The bank confirmation platform for audit professionals leverages technologies like blockchain for tamper-proof assurance to enable bank statement retrieval from banks worldwide. The new, entirely online experience allows users to self-serve through a browser-based interface and begin using the tool. The software lets clients be the ones to securely and privately authorize data access, removing the need to wait for bank responses. By removing human intermediaries in responding to requests, Wolters Kluwer says this eliminates a potential avenue for fraud as well. It is built for scalability, security and speed, compliance with SOC 1, SOC 2, ISO 27001 and audit industry standards, and also provides an audit trail of the end-to-end process stored in the blockchain. 

It is currently designed to support firms in the U.S., with integration across platforms in Canada and the U.K. to soon follow. Firms have the opportunity to try the platform before committing.

"With this launch, we're offering a smarter, faster alternative to legacy confirmation tools burdened by manual bank responses and long wait times, helping firms mitigate delays and reduce the risk of costly audit failures," said Cathy Rowe, Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting North America's senior vice president for the U.S. professional market. "By enabling real-time data retrieval through modern technology, CCH Validate streamlines the entire process—delivering a more intuitive, efficient, and reliable experience for firms and their clients."

The announcement comes shortly after Wolters Kluwer announced a pair of new features for its CCH AnswerConnect tax research platform. The first update is a generative AI-based summarization tool, which lets users generate a summary of any secondary source document, with the ability to ask follow-up questions. The second is a kind of meta-tool: a directory that is used to discover and access research tools by topic and use case, from smart charts and checklists to calculators, flow charts and client letters, with the idea being that users can access new resources and solutions that they may not have previously known existed.