Tax, Accounting & Legal
Published  6 MIN READ
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You Need to Have a Conversation with Your Bank

by Dan Gill, CTP, Director of Corporate Systems, The Weiland Financial Group, Inc.

Bank Account Management (BAM) and communicating with banks is a major challenge faced by every corporation with bank accounts. Automated programmes along with SWIFT eBAM stand poised to change the way we talk with our banks, revolutionising bank account management in much the same way email changed the concept of mail forever. 

Corporate banking relationships have never been more complex than they are today. As corporations struggle with the idea of reducing their bank account inventory while simultaneously managing counterparty risk and meeting controls requirements, the concept of Bank Account Management (BAM) has been brought to the forefront of the international treasury community.

Automated Bank Account Management software applications help by providing a highly structured and controlled methodology for a company to manage its bank accounts.

Properly accounting for and controlling bank accounts and their associated legal entities, signers, the employees that have authorities over those accounts, bank policies and practices, mailing addresses, contact information, as well as audit and legal requirements is a daunting task. The days of keeping your list of bank accounts in a spreadsheet or a simple database have passed. Managing all of the data related to your company’s bank accounts is a difficult task on its own, trying to communicate this information with your banks and keep it all in sync is nearly impossible. Countless letters, spreadsheets, and phone calls are exchanged in a never-ending attempt to accomplish one single goal: synchronisation of your company’s bank account data with its banks. Automated Bank Account Management software applications help by providing a highly structured and controlled methodology for a company to manage its bank accounts. They even make valiant attempts at providing tools to streamline communications with banks. Until a standard method of communicating bank account management information is put in place, companies will have a difficult time asserting that they have effective controls around their inventory of accounts.