Acclaim cuts month-end close by 65% with Airwallex Spend

Jared King

CEO of Acclaim

"Airwallex has definitely improved life for my co-founder and me. We almost don't even get questions about month-end close anymore because we're able to accurately tag and provide context on those transactions as they happen."

Introducing Acclaim

The insurance industry moves trillions of dollars annually, yet much of it still relies on manual wire transfers, messy spreadsheets, and fragmented finance teams. Acclaim was founded to solve this by automating claim and commission payouts using AI, providing the treasury infrastructure companies need to manage loss funds and complex cash workflows across the full payment lifecycle – from premium collection to disbursement.

Acclaim operates in the international insurance market – cross-border health, travel, and life insurance – which means its own internal operations are inherently global. As CEO, Jared King explains, the business constantly interacts with a worldwide network of media partners, marketing vendors, and software providers. To scale, it needed a financial partner that understood cross-border commerce as deeply as it did.

The challenge: domestic banking wasn't built for a global business

Before partnering with Airwallex, Acclaim managed its spend through a combination of traditional banks and US-centric spend management platforms. While these tools worked for domestic expenses, they fell short in a global context. 

The team faced three primary hurdles: 

• The "short pay" problem. When paying international vendors via traditional wire transfers, intermediary bank fees often reduce the amount the vendor receives. For partners accustomed to dealing with US businesses, this was a familiar frustration, but it created reconciliation headaches and strained supplier relationships on Acclaim's end.

• Manual reconciliation. Acclaim uses an outsourced CFO and accounting service, which means the finance team doesn't carry day-to-day context on every transaction. Without a way to tag and code expenses at the point of sale, month-end became a barrage of questions: "What was this for?" and "Which department owns this?" The result was a slow, painful close process that consumed roughly 25–30 hours per month.

• Currency friction. Paying for global events, travel, and software in non-USD currencies meant dealing with opaque exchange rates and unnecessary conversion steps – and a constant risk of paying the wrong amount. 

According to Jared, "being able to pay providers in the currency they’re billing in, and not having to do some kind of exchange rate or pay in USD and try to figure out the right amount to pay, that's a very useful capability for us."

On top of these operational issues, a large portion of spend flowed through employee reimbursements, creating further administrative burden for a lean team.

The solution: one platform to manage spend across currencies, teams, and time zones

After evaluating around 15 providers, Acclaim chose Airwallex for the breadth of its capabilities and the ease of working with the team. The partner experience mattered as much as the product. "Some companies are not great about listening to your needs and tailoring the solution and how it's presented," says Jared. "Airwallex did a great job, and we've just enjoyed working with everyone there."

Acclaim consolidated its entire spend management onto the platform. The team uses Airwallex Corporate Cards for travel, events, and recurring digital subscriptions, while Global Accounts enable them to pay supplier invoices in local currencies – GBP, EUR, and CAD – so vendors receive exactly what they were billed.

To solve the reconciliation problem, Acclaim turned to Airwallex's accounting system integration. Rather than leaving context to memory or follow-up emails, team members now code transactions and add notes in real time. This creates a clean handoff to the outsourced bookkeeping team, removing the back-and-forth that previously stalled the close.

Spend controls round out the setup. Acclaim uses materiality thresholds to flag higher-value transactions for review, while smaller everyday expenses flow through automatically with pre-set limits – keeping oversight focused where it matters most. Employee cards with granular controls have also replaced the majority of employee reimbursements, reducing that workflow to edge cases only.

The results: faster closes, happier vendors, and a finance team free to focus on growth

Acclaim has transformed its finance function from a manual hurdle into a scalable engine.

The most immediate impact was on vendor relationships. By paying invoices in local currency, Acclaim eliminated short pays entirely. Partners now receive the exact amount billed, every time.

Jared King

CEO of Acclaim

"We've even received compliments from our suppliers in the UK on how they received the exact amount they billed us. They appreciated the speed of payment and the accuracy of it."

Month-end close has accelerated significantly. Time spent on monthly reconciliation has fallen by 65%, from roughly 25–30 hours down to 8–10 hours, driven by automated transaction feeds, receipt capture, and real-time categorization. Manual reimbursement workflows have dropped by around 90%, now limited to edge cases where a card isn't practical.

The accounting integration has been central to that shift. "It gives a much nicer handoff," Jared explains, "and ultimately that allows us to close faster, and we get fewer questions about what the transaction is or what the

expense is." The operational headroom this creates has real value for a startup.

Scaling spend controls as the team grows

As Acclaim continues to expand its global footprint, the team plans to roll out more Airwallex cards with granular spend controls to further reduce reliance on employee reimbursements – whether for international industry events, site visits, or onboarding new global suppliers.

For a business built on automating complex financial workflows for others, having that same automation in place internally is more than a convenience. It's a proof of concept.

"We look at it as a long-term partnership," says Jared. "Everything's going well."

See how Airwallex can help you automate your global spend.

Eliminate manual reconciliation, save on FX costs, and give your team the tools to scale internationally without the overhead.