Treasury News Network

Learn & Share the latest News & Analysis in Corporate Treasury

  1. Home
  2. Bank Relations & KYC
  3. Bank Fees Reconciliation & Negotiation

Growing Bank Services Billing standards adoption by banks, suppliers & corporates

The lovely Paul Burstein, a long time member of the GE Treasury team, and a passionate supporter and one of the driving forces behind the BSB initiative, sadly died in July last year. But he lives on in many ways: in the memories of his friends, colleagues and family, and in the BSB Newsletter which he set up. A group of passionate supporters of the BSB initiative have formed an editorial board* to continue the BSB Newsletter. Their first edition is out.

Editorial board’s first BSB Newsletter

The new BSB Newsletter uses the same approach: loads of facts and figures, contacts and progress reports on various aspects of BSB plus an article by TIPCO’s Hubert Rappold on ‘Managing banks fees - quo vadis?’. It has a much smoother and organised look and feel with its two column layout. Paul would have smiled and said, “Well done.”

Well done indeed. It would have been a shame for this newsletter to disappear, as it is full of useful information and ideas. To join the mailing list, comment on this edition, or contribute news or articles to a future edition of the newsletter, e-mail: TWISTBSB@TWISTstandards.org

Copies of current edition and prior BSB newsletters are available on the TWIST Standards site: http://twiststandards.org/

Below we review some of the items reported in the February BSB Newsletter.

BSB availability

The BSB group’s November 2014 survey showed that there are 16 banks in production with BSB (either or both the newer ISO 20022 version on the original TWIST version). Other banks may be in production but have not publically declared. 13 application vendors are known to support the standard: 9 for end users (bill recipients), 4 for banks, see table below.

Good progress reported

As at February 2016:

  • BSB can be used with bank accounts held in 100+ countries based on the banks now providing bank billing statements in this standard format.
  • AFP Global Service Codes (GSC) see growing use with over 50 subscribers including banks and application vendors. GSC provides a standard encoding by fee type to make it easier for recipients to understand their billing statements.
  • in a survey at the last AFP Annual Conference, corporate practitioners attributed the value of using the BSB format to:
    • reduced costs
    • detailed information on bank transaction services usage
    • accounting for unit consumption of banking services.

—-

* Editorial board members:

  • Robert J. Blair, Consultant (ex JPMorgan)
  • Andrew W. Griebenow, HSBC
  • Emmanuel Léchère, Redbridge DTA (ex bfinance)
  • Sandrine Legoff, BNP Paribas
  • Bridget Meyer, Redbridge DTA (ex The Montauk Group)
  • Jacques Molgo, Air Liquide
  • Lisa Novick, Citi
  • Martin Postweiler, Merck Group
  • Hubert Rappold, TIPCO

CTMfile take: Extending the usage of BSB standards and codes is vital for the efficiency and transparency of corporate-bank relationships. This work is so important. The corporate treasury business world-wide owes Paul a huge thanks. (Any comments and thanks to Paul will be passed on.)

Like this item? Get our Weekly Update newsletter. Subscribe today

Also see

Add a comment

New comment submissions are moderated.