Internet: Optimizing Cash Flows

The faster the markets move-jet-propelled by increasingly powerful systems support-the faster corporations have to react. Fighting fire with fire, banks are turning to technology to enable corporate customers to access their cash

positions at any given moment to optimize cash flows.

The systems enable customers to tap into the bank network and pull up real-time account, transaction and prior balance information. State Street Boston Corp., for example, has Web-enabled its information and reporting tool, Prime-Meridian, so that corporate customers can access the bank anywhere, anytime, without proprietary software. "The competition for space on our clients' desktop computers has turned everybody to the Internet where no software has to be housed on the PC," says Mike Lenahan, svp, cash management services, of State Street. The bank also lets corporate customers generate balance summary, transaction detail, statement, historic account information, controlled disbursement presentment, investments and wire activity reports.

The system was developed in partnership with ICM Electronic Banking Services. "We worked with (State Street) to define functionality for their clients and build a standard product for ourselves," says Eric Campbell, president of ICM. The net-net for State Street was a discounted price tag because the bank was, in essence, financing the manufacture of a new product for ICM. Both Lenahan and Campbell declined to reveal costs, but Campbell did say that if another bank were to buy the same system today, it would cost between $500,000 and $2 million, depending on what systems they already have in place.

The ICM solution uses hub technology that allows the bank to pull information from specified silos and deliver it to a customer's desktop. The hub technology creates one platform to consolidate applications into one environment for the client. "So if you want to expand and add new message types or new services," says Campbell, "you can deploy those things across the platform without having to reinvent it."

-bers tfn.com