Virtual Account Management
The need for better control and visibility over their cash inflow and outflow—and liquidity positions—has led corporates to seek smarter transaction banking alternatives like virtual accounts. These are a series of dummy accounts used to make and receive payments on behalf of one physical account. Virtual accounts also offer corporates the ability to reconcile payments in real time. West European banks like Deutsche Bank and UniCredit already offer virtual accounts to their corporate clients.
Corporates with multiple banking relationships, multiple accounts across different banks and with a need to rationalize complex accounting structures can especially benefit from virtual accounts. They can virtually administer inter-company loans, calculate interest, increase cost efficiencies, simplify cash and liquidity management, and increase straight-through processing (STP) rates in reconciliation.
A Virtual Account Management (VAM) platform can help corporates create, manage and monitor virtual accounts better. They offer benefits like a self-servicing VAM engine, a dashboard view to account information and a sophisticated reporting module, in addition to payments and liquidity management. While they can significantly reduce the investments banks require to stay active in the industry, VAM platforms can also complicate a bank’s ability to have a single comprehensive view of their customers.
If you want to learn more about Virtual Account Management read Accenture's latest Point-Of-View (link below).