Bank Solutions Group

Vendor Contract Pricing & Compliance Review

Are you fully utilizing the services you are paying for? Are you paying for services you don’t need or use?  Do you overpay because of compliance worries?

There is a very good chance you are overpaying your vendors by 10-30%.  Are your contracts more than 2 years old? Have you increased the size of your business through growth, acquisition or merger?  Have you expanded into new markets or businesses?  Whether you are processing with Fiserv, Jack Henry, FIS, First Data, TSYS, D&H (Harland) or another vendor, all those events can drastically alter your original cost/benefit calculation.

The proof is in the numbers:

• A Bank Solutions Group banking client in the Midwest with a $106 million annual processing cost was overpaying by $50 million.
• Another Bank Solutions Group regional banking client in the Northeast was overpaying by $2 million on a $7 million annual item processing contract.
• A Bank Solutions Group community bank with a $400,000 annual processing cost was able to save $80,000 per year.
• Bank Solutions Group defines vendor management more broadly than the FFIEC guidelines.  Managing one of your biggest cost categories is more than mere compliance.  We believe it’s the discipline of establishing vendor costs, benefits and risk management goals and selecting and managing vendors to consistently meet those goals.

It is not just about how much savings you can squeeze out of your vendors, which is often the narrow focus of consultants who base their fees on that metric.   In contrast, Bank Solutions Group uses our  “Right Pricing” methodology to balance pricing with services, compliance requirements and service levels.  We ensure you get the best possible pricing for the services and service levels you demand –  the full picture.

How does “Right Pricing” work?

Bank Solutions Group focuses on expense reduction in the following specific areas that are often sources of significant hidden cost reduction opportunity:

• ATM/Debit and Credit Card Processing
• Check Vendor Contracts
• Core Data Processing Contracts
• Item Processing Contracts
• Internet Banking Contracts
• Bill Payment Contracts

For a conservative fixed fee, Bank Solutions Group will conduct an initial two-week diagnostic of all contracts and invoices and provide an estimate of potential savings together with a recommended approach to achieve it.

Thereafter, for a flat fee or a blended minimal base fee and percentage of the projected savings, Bank Solutions Group will lead the process of renegotiating with your vendors which may include rebidding some or all contracts. That’s a skill that doesn’t come with doing it once every three years.  Our consultants hone their vendor negotiating skills dozens of times a year with a host of different vendors and banks.

With a proprietary database of contract terms and pricing, Bank Solutions Group’s consultants have reevaluated vendor management programs at hundreds of banks and successfully renegotiated contract terms and achieved measurable results.