Cash management: Third-party provision finally takes off

White labelling and third-party provision have been a perennial red herring in cash management but the credit crunch might finally be the spur to them taking off. By depressing bank revenues and consequently putting pressure on technology budgets – often the first thing to be cut in tough times – banks will simply have to operate differently in order to stay in the market.

Cash management poll 2008: Results

Cash management: Cash captains see their ship come in

Citi: the $6.5 billion start-up

Emerging markets: challenges remain

Financial institutions: uncertainty breeds competition

Crunch time is looming not just because of declining revenues. More important is the relentless technological demands of the industry as a result of new regulations such as know-your-customer, anti-money-laundering, Sepa and the EU’s Payment Service Directive, Basle II and Target2 (an interbank payment system for the real-time processing of cross-border transfers).

“We recognize now that it’s smart to buy from best-in-class providers – although it was a painful process for us to accept the model,” admits Francesco Vanni d’Archirafi, global head of treasury and trade solutions at Citi, who says the logic is clearly compelling.

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