Awards for Excellence 2020
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Bank of America is the undisputed leader in transaction services in North America. Long before the coronavirus crisis struck its home market, the bank had entered the Euromoney awards period with strong momentum. But by the end of that period it was being called upon to deploy all its leadership to help businesses across the US.
That it did so is testament to the bank’s exceptional franchise and it is again North America’s best bank for transaction services.
Before the Covid-19 crisis, BofA was already doing what it is best at: using its immense breadth and reach as a springboard for fresh thinking in all areas of treasury and payments.
“What is important is that in spite of our size and market share, the bank is able to continue driving innovation and being at the forefront of market developments,” says Matthew Davies, global co-head of corporate sales, global transaction services (GTS) and head of GTS Europe, Middle East and Africa.
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Matthew Davies, |
CashPro is the bank’s flagship treasury platform, and it never stands still. In the last year, its self-service tool, CashPro Assistant, acquired some new capabilities, allowing the digitalization of the regular know-your-customer (KYC) refresh processes, new authority management tools to control who can sign what, and a dashboard to allow clients to make service requests and monitor their progress.
CashPro can now hook up to a client’s Apple Watch, using their mobile token to generate a one-time password. In the summer of 2019, shortly after the function was added, one electronics firm used it to move $1.6 billion.
The bank put e-signature capabilities on the CashPro mobile app – another development that proved its worth during the coronavirus crisis. In March 2020, electronic signing of documents on the platform rose 42% from the previous month.
For Dave Kretz, head of global strategy and payments in GTS, the bank’s ability to respond when catastrophe hit was down to the hard work it was doing in its normal course of business.
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Dave Kretz, |
It was already a leader in partnering with Zelle, a money transfer system, and in the issuance of prepaid cards for unemployment benefits.
Both were key components of a drive to move away from paper cheques and both took on far greater significance when the crisis hit.
In a seven-week period from mid March, the bank processed for its US state government clients about three quarters of all the unemployment payments that it had made in the whole of 2019.
“The things we were doing before the crisis became much more important during it,” says Kretz. “The crisis brought to the fore the real need to move away from physical instruments.”
Much of the end-to-end digitalization journey that BofA has taken its clients on began two years ago with an effort that it calls ‘Digital Transformation’. The bank invested heavily to “dematerialize” – in Davies’s words – many of its interactions with clients.
By March 2020 Covid-19 was forcing that dematerialization almost overnight on most businesses in the US. BofA had many to onboard but was in a good place to be able to do so.
Since the end of the awards review period on March 31, the importance of what the bank has done for its treasury clients has only grown. In transaction services more than in almost any other field, it is clear that everything BofA was already doing for clients in the name of efficiency is now crucial for their survival.
