Commercial Bank Account Management: The Promise of eBAM

Bank account management is not rocket science. The task is not intellectually difficult, but rather operationally difficult because of the requirements for precision and accuracy with respect to constantly changing small details. For most of banking's history, accounts were administered via paper documents executed in multiples and physically delivered to the account-holding bank, whether by courier or mail, by carriage, vehicle, boat, or more recently by airmail. Technological improvements in document management have transformed the process, such that a task once requiring months for completion can now be done in days or weeks, depending on the locality.

New Mercator research, Commercial Bank Account Management: The Promise of eBAM, explores the electronic bank account management (eBAM) landscape including the challenges with established methods, interim solutions, and visions for the future. An overview of vendors offering eBAM solutions for banks and corporations is also presented.

"The process of automating bank account management in a corporation begins with the assembly of an accurate current status report, including data cleansed and confirmed by the banks involved," commented Patricia McGinnis, director of the Commercial and Enterprise Payments Service at Mercator Advisory Group and the author of the report. "Electronic updating cannot begin until an electronic foundation is laid, but even then, some countries and some banks will be unable to support EBAM in the near future."