Summary
Historically, transaction banking, and more specifically cash management services have been the forte of large banks, particularly with a wide branch network. However, the digital disruption has also empowered every bank who has a vision, to punch way above their weight, as geography has become history. Particularly, the Digital Transaction banking space – including liquidity management, collections & receivables, payments, trade finance, supply chain financing and treasury is now increasingly perceived as the secret sauce to sustain and build a successful corporate banking franchise.
This is more pronounced as customer expectations are shifting from just being able to provide banking services to having a differentiated experience based on their persona. Siloed cash management functions are giving way to integrated transaction banking services that also embed trade and supply chain products in an integrated manner. More importantly, online self on-boarding and paperless digital experiences are accorded much higher prominence and value by corporate customers, especially in a Covid-19 era.
How we add value
Cedar has built a Center of Excellence in the area of Transaction Banking and has worked with global clients in building and implementing digital transaction banking strategy. Cedar’s holistic approach using the Balanced Scorecard framework helps banks to build and validate their transaction banking business model, define their target customer segments, record voice of customers, develop user journeys, enhance their product offering and drive a successful coverage model. From a technology standpoint, Cedar also has a rich understanding of all the key suppliers in this space and has helped its clients in their selection of a best-fit technology platform and in its successful implementation.
Cedar’s approach helps banks to significantly demonstrate the 5 key differentiators that set apart a successful digital corporate bank from the rest. These include:
- Personalization: Help business users and end customers to customize the solution interface and experience as per their expectations. This is a persona-based approach that helps contextualize the experience layer right from CXOs all the way to Managers.
- Consistent Experience: Offer an integrated experience across mobile and web channels using a single solution rather than distinct channel specific solutions. The pandemic has accelerated omni-channel or mobile-first use cases, allowing users to start on a channel and seamlessly end in another.
- Micro Services: Design solutions based on micro apps and micro services instead of monolithic structures to facilitate easier and faster plug-and-play of specific features. The push to API based orchestration, with standardization has allowed these modular designs to come to the fore.
- Customer Insight based offering: Institutionalize a continuous improvisation to the offering, based on deeper insights into how customers are using the solutions.
- Quick time to market: Agile development and a dev-ops structure enables even the largest institutions to offer new, innovative products to their clientele with alacrity.
