Serving the New Corporate Treasurer: Implications for Transaction Banking
Abstract
REPORT PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED BY OLIVER WYMAN
This report details the needs of the “new” Corporate Treasurer who is emerging from the economic turmoil, and discusses how transaction banking businesses should orient strategically to best serve this client.
In a new report, Serving the New Corporate Treasurer, Oliver Wyman considers the impact of the financial crisis and credit crunch on Corporate Treasurers. Oliver Wyman believes that it has fundamentally and irrevocably altered their role from a traditionally back office-intensive function, to one that is significantly more visible and highly strategic. The crisis also re-emphasized for many banks the value of transaction banking as a more stable and low-risk source of growth and revenue. We believe that the enhanced role and needs of Corporate Treasury as a client presents new challenges and relationship-deepening opportunities for transaction banking businesses in 2012, as both sides poise for growth.
Axel Miller, a Partner at Oliver Wyman, and co-author of the report along with Elizabeth St-Onge and Michael Wagner, said, “The good news for banks is that the financial crisis has created a corporate customer that has broader, deeper, and more strategic needs. The danger for banks is that the same economic crisis that created stronger customer needs was also tremendously difficult for banks, and many became inwardly focused as they concentrated on their own recovery. Against this backdrop, banks need to make it easy and rewarding for their clients to do business with them. Providing good transaction banking services is a given – clients are looking for value-added services and will reward their bank with a deep and increasing relationship and fee basis. The question for a bank to ask is: Do we have a strategy for increasing and demonstrating our value to corporate customers, while also growing and being profitable?”