Evaluating Banks’ Overall Performance
How well are your cash management banks really performing? Do they provide fast and efficient bank account opening, and accurately and fairly charge for their services? Do they deliver STP in payment processing and what are the error rates? Do they deliver the quality of customer service they promised in the service level agreements, and how fair and competitive are their charges for their FX, loans, returned payments, etc.? How easy is it to manage the relationship? Does the bank really understand your business? Do they suggest solutions that complement and enhance your business? Is there a productive and effective relationship?
Evaluating the overall performance of a cash management bank is difficult. It takes a considerable amount of time, data collection and analysis.
Evaluation Systems and Services
The stand-alone Bank Relationship Management systems and services, and the bank analysis modules in corporate treasury management systems provide much of the data for these analyses. This needs to be combined with data from a wide range of other sources to perform a full cash management bank performance analysis.
Additional data is often required from the banks. Consultants report great variation in the level of data available from the banks with some of the largest banks having to carryout special analyses to provide transaction performance data whilst others have this reporting fully automated. It is, as one consultant put it, 'a hard slog' to obtain all the data required for such analyses.
A wide range of consultancies offer support in reviewing the overall performance of cash management banks.