We often hear that community financial institutions are seeking to attract more core deposits and increase non-interest fee income. A strong Treasury Management infrastructure, which includes the team, support, and suite of services, is the key. However, without the right Treasury Management Sales Officer (TMSO or “TMO”), your institution will be at a disadvantage. My goal is to help you arrive at a “win-win” solution. Your institution can increase its core deposits and fee income, while your TM customers are consistently serviced with top-notch support.

In this blog, I’ll share the 6 traits of a Treasury Management Officer. Let’s start by exploring the essential personality traits of the most successful TMOs.

To succeed in this role, your TMO must possess the following six traits:

Sales driven.

One challenge that many institutions face is having business bankers (their sales team) who aren’t natural salespeople. Some lack sales skills or even avoid using the word “selling.” They’re rarely considered “rainmakers” and often prefer to stay in the branch, waiting for business to come to them. This mindset doesn’t work for a TMO. You need to recognize and nurture true sales talent – and then compensate those individuals appropriately. The TMO role is fundamentally a sales role, just as important as the business banker position.

Customer focused.

Your TMO’s number one concern should always be helping business customers increase efficiency in their daily cash management operations, safely. This means understanding their needs and matching them with your institution’s TM services and solutions.

Strong understanding of business.

To connect with business customers, your TMOs need a solid business background. This helps them relate to your customer’s operations and challenges and makes them more relatable and effective in building trust.

Entrepreneurial spirit.

As a successful TMO, they’ll approach challenges with creativity and an entrepreneurial mindset. They’ll look for innovative ways to solve customer problems, leveraging technology to create efficiencies and optimize cash positions. Being open to new ideas is a must.

Connected with the community.

Building a strong network of business owners is essential. Successful TMOs get involved in your community, and don’t hesitate to ask for their banking business. Having a reliable infrastructure behind them gives them the confidence to make these asks.

Excellent communicators.

TMOs are the “central station” during the prospecting and onboarding process. Clear and timely communication with customers, business bankers, branch personnel, and TM support teams is non-negotiable. Poor communication or follow-through can ruin the customer experience.

By focusing on these 6 traits of a Treasury Management Officer, you can find highly effective TMOs and add valuable assets to your institution.

Looking to strengthen or create your Treasury Management department? As always, we’re here to help.

After working with many institutions over the years, we’re convinced that there are a minimum of 12 online banking features that are essential for business success. One of the most important systems your institution invests in is your Online Banking Platform (OLB) – yet many of our clients have purchased OLB systems that are missing several features and are not able to offer them as services.

The Online Banking Platform is the primary delivery mechanism through which business customers access your treasury management services. It is the foundation of your business-focused digital banking strategy. Your Online Banking Platform, at a minimum, must be available 24 hours per day and offer complete access via web and mobile interfaces. Today, we’re focusing on the web-based online banking capabilities and their integration with treasury management services.

Let’s Evaluate your Current Business Offerings:

1. Does your Online Banking Platform integrate well with your core system?
   1. Rate your institution from 1-5 with a 1 having no integration and a 5 with a completely human “hands off” integration.
2. Does your Online Banking Platform integrate well with each of the TM services you offer your business customers?
   1. Rate your institution from 1-5 with a 1 having no integration to backend TM services and a 5 with a completely human “hands off” integration.
3. Do you have a separate OLB Platform for consumers and businesses?
   1. Rate your institution from a 1-5 with a 1 having one platform for both and a 5 for two separate platforms customized for each customer type.

If you scored less than a 5 on our evaluation, read on, we’ve got some great advice for you. If you scored a 12-15, either you are one of our clients or you have a very robust OLB/TM system.

Let’s discuss the 12 Online Banking Features That Are Essential for Business Success:

Let’s start with the minimum expectations of your Online Banking Platform for business customers:

• The system allows multiple users with multiple security levels under a single business entity.
• The system allows multiple businesses under one umbrella (i.e., holding company and subsidiaries).
• The system offers multifactor authentication (MFA) options (hard token, soft token, or biometric).
  • Side note: We no longer consider text messaging safe for business OLB system access. It is still too easy to SIM swap a mobile phone.

Your business customers should be able to conduct all or most of their banking business on this platform.

Basic Banking Functions

1. Initiate internal transfers. Businesses need to make transfers between their main operating account and other accounts such as payroll and savings accounts. Initiating internal transfers is a must. Certain business owners who have their personal accounts with you may need to transfer funds between personal and business accounts. These businesses are typically solopreneurs or Single Member LLC entities. Your OLB system should allow this function and it typically occurs via the consumer platform.
2. Initiate stop payments. Businesses with high check writing activity may need, from time to time, to place stop payment on a check. Your OLB platform should allow them to initiate the stop payment with all the appropriate information and submit it online. Often we see clients with a completely manual process behind the scenes as if the customer showed up at a branch. Instead, the system should be able to automatically place the stop payment and process the charge.
3. View current and previous day transaction information. The ability to download previous day information has been available from the early days of online banking. Businesses should be able to download their bank information to their accounting software anytime. The next step will be to download real time transactions (items that post that day).
4. Electronic Bank Statements. Businesses expect the ability to download their monthly bank statement via PDF format for at least the last 18 months. Many institutions offer longer availability, but most businesses usually need 18-24 months’ worth of data.
5. View check images. Along with statements, businesses need to view images of checks that cleared, or items deposited. It is especially important to be able to view checks deposited via remote or mobile deposit capture. Again, the expectation is a minimum of 18 months availability.
6. Originate payments via BillPay. Small businesses enjoy the capability of issuing payments via the BillPay service which is typically free. As their volume of payments increases, you can offer other ways of paying their bills like ACH origination (see below).

Many of the above basic banking functions may be for smaller businesses with low transaction volume. We typically see these types of customers enrolled on the consumer (retail) OLB platform. Your large customers may also as for these functions, so be sure your business OLB system can do them also.

Treasury Management Services

7. Initiate domestic and international wire transfers. As your business customers grow or as you acquire larger commercial customers, they will need Treasury Management services. They will need the capability to initiate domestic wires and international wires. It is important to offer this service with multifactor authentication and the ability to set up multiple authority levels. The more robust OLB platforms allow the business customer to do self-administration where they assign the authority levels to their users.
8. Account Reconciliation service. The ability to download daily account transactions also allows the business customer’s accounting software to reconcile to the bank daily. Account Reconciliation is one of the oldest TM services; however, not all OLB platforms offer it.
9. View PDF Account Analysis Statements. Your TM customers will expect to receive their monthly Account Analysis statement via the OLB platform. This capability is a big challenge for certain core systems that do not produce the Account Analysis statements digitally. They look like a “raw statement” and is not presentable to the customers without major manual work. Some institutions even have to print them to statement paper first and then digitize them because the core is antiquated.
10. Originate ACH payments. One of the top-selling TM services you must offer to your business customers is ACH Origination. For businesses that pay lots of bills via check, the ability to pay bills via ACH saves them time and money. Your TM business customers should be able to upload their ACH batches via your OLB platform.
11. Access Check and ACH Positive Pay. Your business customers should be able to upload their Check or ACH batches via your OLB platform. This is another important TM service that typically is not integrated (or not well) with the core. Therefore, operations staff must do a lot of manual workarounds to make it work correctly. All done behind the scenes so customers “feel” like the system is working as intended. This process can be costly and inefficient for the institution.
12. Connect to Remote Deposit Capture. Finally, your RDC customers should be able to connect to their RDC service through the OLB platform. Again, it takes integration between the core system, the RDC provider (if other than the core provider), and the OLB platform.

It is important to continually offer convenience and safety to your business customers when using your OLB platform. I hope this list of 12 online banking features that are essential for business success will serve as a foundation to improve upon.

Looking for assistance with refining your Treasury Management department? As always, we’re here to help.