NOTICIAS

In the financial and accounting world, accessing accurate, real-time data is essential. Yet many companies still rely on data scraping to extract information from banking platforms or external systems. While it may seem like a quick fix, this practice poses legal and operational risks that can compromise critical processes such as bank reconciliation, financial reporting, or even automated data uploads into an ERP. In contrast, direct integrations via API, databases, SharePoint, or FTP/SFTP provide a safer, more robust alternative that aligns with current regulatory standards.

Scraping: fast, but risky

Scraping involves using bots or scripts to extract visible data from a website. In Finance, it’s often used to capture bank transactions, account statements, or available balances by logging in with user credentials and mimicking navigation behavior. Although it may appear to be an efficient solution, it comes with serious consequences.

From a legal standpoint, scraping may violate platform terms of use that explicitly prohibit automated access. Additionally, under European GDPR regulations, collecting personal data through automation without explicit consent may be considered unlawful — even if the data is publicly accessible.

From a technical perspective, scraping is extremely fragile. A minor change in a website’s layout can break the extraction logic. It’s estimated that up to 30% of websites change their structure every three months, causing frequent failures in automated processes. Most importantly, since scraping relies on visual extraction, it does not ensure data traceability or quality — both of which are critical for reconciliation, audits, or updates to core systems.

Furthermore, because scraping requires sharing banking credentials with third parties, it creates security vulnerabilities. These credentials are often stored without encryption or proper access controls, increasing the risk of data breaches and privacy violations.

The value of secure, automated integrations

Modern platforms offering direct integrations — like Conciliac IDM — allow companies to connect to multiple data sources through official and secure methods such as APIs, databases, SharePoint, or FTP/SFTP. This enables automated, traceable access in full compliance with regulatory standards.

The latest version of Conciliac IDM also leverages artificial intelligence to suggest matches between data structures from different sources. This is especially useful when reconciling bank transactions from multiple institutions or importing structured information from various systems for consolidated processing.

With this approach:

• Sensitive credentials are never shared — access is managed through encrypted tokens or secure keys.
• Data is transferred in a structured, traceable, and secure way.
• Integrations are more stable — API changes are typically documented and announced in advance, unlike scraping, which can break overnight.

In regulated industries like banking, this model aligns with standards such as the European PSD2 directive, which promotes the use of open APIs as a secure method for accessing account information, effectively replacing scraping altogether.

Choosing security, compliance, and efficiency

Scraping may seem like a convenient option when no official connectors are available, but the legal, technical, and reputational risks make it unsustainable in the long term. On the other hand, adopting a solution with direct and automated integrations — like Conciliac IDM — enables organizations to manage critical processes such as bank reconciliation, banking integration, or ERP data feeds with greater efficiency, traceability, and compliance.

If your company still uses scraping or struggles to integrate multiple data sources, we invite you to discover how Conciliac IDM can help transform your process.

Request a demo today and explore how to improve your data management — without taking unnecessary risks.