Plan to leverage bank’s investment in modern payments system

A wholesale payments capability is a core component of a corporate banking proposition. It provides corporate and institutional clients with solutions that facilitate payments to suppliers, collect funds from customers, and optimise their cash and liquidity positions.

The economic environment has put pressure of net interest income and banks are increasingly looking at growing fee-generating parts of the business. Corporate clients, through their experience as retail banking customers, have changing expectations and wholesale payments are increasingly under pressure to catch up with payment innovation prevalent in retail payments.

Genesis was appointed by a large multinational bank to develop a business strategy for the domestic wholesale payments business unit that would leverage the bank’s strategic investment in a modern payments architecture.

The analysis began by conducting a comprehensive review of international trends in wholesale payments to identify the key drivers for change: changing customer expectations, technology innovation, regulation and globalisation. An in-depth analysis of payment regulation provided a framework for where to prioritise innovation.

An in-depth review of the bank’s revenue from the various payment service lines was conducted to highlight key areas of concern and growth for the bank. The analysis provided flags for areas of risk and concentration. The analysis also evidenced areas of strength, which the bank could leverage to grow revenue.

Following the research phase, the team worked closely with the client to define the business vision and mission; guiding principles; and to understand the current capabilities and contrast this against the systems potential to identify gaps. Using the research as an input, the team was then able to develop initiatives to help the business achieve the strategy. The final outcome was the development of a tool that scored the relative importance of each initiative against a set of qualifying criteria to develop a prioritised road map.