Institutional Banking & Treasury Optimisation · Technical White Paper
Institutional Banking & Treasury Optimisation
A method for reconstructing a banking estate from statements rather than tariffs — repricing against actual transaction behaviour, redesigning accounts by purpose, and separating what was negotiated from what was designed.
1 · Executive summary
An estate that evolved rather than being designed
Four banking relationships, 68 accounts concentrated at one primary bank, further accounts at three others, separate fleet and merchant arrangements, and a mixture of branch-oriented and centrally managed functions.
The objective was broader than a cheaper tariff schedule. It required reconstructing the estate, validating actual account use, repricing transaction behaviour, redesigning account purpose, treating surplus cash, analysing merchant acquiring, and improving access and signatory governance.
Result-status discipline
The paper distinguishes what was negotiated and quantified from what was designed for future implementation.
This matters in banking optimisation because a signed rate schedule, an account-closure recommendation and an alternative merchant proposal are different kinds of result, and should not be collapsed into one savings figure.
2 · Mandate scope
Seven elements, each with a control objective
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| Element | Commercial objective | Control objective |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Reduce avoidable bank and transaction charges. | Tie every claimed saving to actual activity and a documented rate. |
| Functionality | Match account type and service to actual use. | Avoid paying for products or features that are unused or duplicated. |
| Centralisation | Reduce unnecessary branch and account fragmentation. | Create a purpose-based estate with clear ownership and visibility. |
| Treasury | Improve treatment of surplus balances. | Sweep cash to an appropriate interest-bearing destination while preserving liquidity. |
| Payments | Optimise EFT, inter-account, cash and merchant channels. | Use the lowest appropriate channel consistent with operational need and control. |
| Governance | Simplify users, signatories and account administration. | Strengthen segregation of duties, auditability and account maintenance. |
| FICA and onboarding | Improve consistency of bank records and authorised-user administration. | Reduce duplicated maintenance work while preserving the bank's due-diligence requirements. |
This was not a bank-selection exercise. The right answer per account could be repricing, product redesignation, closure, retention or migration.
4 · Evidence principle
A bank statement tells you what was charged. It does not tell you whether the account type was appropriate, whether a different transaction channel should have been used, whether a sweep destination was earning interest, or whether the operational purpose required a separate account at all.
That is why the reconstruction combined twelve months of statements with account and signatory registers, published tariffs, negotiated schedules, supplier proposals, merchant turnover data and operational interviews — the last of these specifically to validate sweep behaviour, payment processes and account purpose, none of which are visible on a statement.
13 · Governance
Fewer accounts only improves control if the access design follows
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| Control area | Design consideration |
|---|---|
| User roles | Differentiate view, capture, edit, beneficiary creation, authorisation and payment rights. |
| Dual authorisation | Maker-checker controls appropriate to payment risk and organisational policy. |
| Beneficiary governance | Control who can create or amend beneficiaries, and how changes are independently verified. |
| Bulk payments | Structured files or batch processing where this reduces manual capture while preserving authorisation. |
| Audit trail | Centralised transaction visibility, retaining system evidence of user actions and approvals. |
| Signatory maintenance | A controlled process for appointment, removal and bank notification of authorised persons. |
| Branch and site deposits | Retain deposit identifiers or reference structures, so centralisation does not destroy source visibility. |
| Business continuity | Ensure rationalisation does not create a single operational point of failure without contingency. |
14 · Regulatory context
What bounds an account rationalisation today
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| Framework | Relevance |
|---|---|
| Financial Intelligence Centre Act and FIC guidance | Banks apply customer due diligence and risk-based controls. Consolidating accounts reduces duplicated administration; it does not remove the bank's obligation to maintain client, controlling-person and authorised-person information. |
| Protection of Personal Information Act | Banking profiles, authorised-user details, payment records and beneficiary data contain personal information. Access design, extracts and shared working files need appropriate information governance. |
| National Payment System Act | Electronic payment, clearing and settlement sit inside a regulated framework. Channel optimisation should use authorised bank and payment products rather than bypassing control mechanisms. |
| Corporation for Deposit Insurance | Operating since April 2024, covering qualifying depositors including non-profit organisations up to the statutory limit per depositor per registered bank. |
The deposit-insurance point is a current treasury-governance consideration for an organisation planning this work now. It is not a basis for the historical optimisation result, which predates it.
18 · Limitations
What the published figures do not cover
- Pricing results rest on the transaction and account population in the engagement evidence, and should not be extrapolated to accounts or periods outside the completed phase models.
- The 14.9% compares modelled forward charges with negotiated charges for the same activity across the completed phase population. It is NOT a percentage of total banking spend across all institutions.
- The future-state account count was a structural recommendation, dependent on executive decisions, debit-order migration, account purpose and operational requirements.
- The treasury rate was an engagement-period negotiated rate, not current market guidance.
- Merchant-acquiring savings were modelled from actual terminal and turnover evidence, and require implementation verification before being called realised.
- Quotations and standard tariffs change, so the method requires a signed commercial basis and post-change statement verification.
19 · What the mandate demonstrates
Eight conclusions, including one against its own headline
- Banking optimisation is an operating-model exercise as much as a tariff exercise.
- Account count should be driven by purpose and control, not by organisational history.
- Actual transaction behaviour is the correct basis for testing negotiated bank rates.
- Cash-deposit economics differ materially by deposit-size tier, so averages conceal the true saving.
- A sweep is not a treasury optimisation if the destination does not earn an appropriate return.
- Merchant acquiring should be separated into terminal rental, ordinary commission and minimum-fee components before alternatives are compared.
- And the one that argues against the headline: A zero-charge or specialist account should not be closed simply to increase a consolidation statistic.
- Implementation verification is essential, because negotiated pricing has no value if the agreed rates never appear on statements and merchant billing.