Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Deposits Will Be Critical in 2009

By Mark Brousseau

There’s little question that we’ll see continued economic change and upheaval in 2009. But Michael Pratt, chief marketing officer, Panini North America, says remote deposit capture (RDC) solutions create an opportunity for financial institutions (FIs) to defend and even acquire the ever-important Demand Deposit Account (DDA) line of business.

With tightened credit markets and higher regulatory and market scrutiny, domestic deposits have become even more critical for FIs. McKinsey estimates that payments represented $235B in FI revenue in 2006, or 40-50 percent of an average bank’s revenue, Pratt notes. Revenue related to DDA is typically 45 percent of this base, or 18-22 percent of an average bank’s total revenue -- highlighting the significance of payments and deposits to a bank.

Economic conditions have increasingly made deposits the “benchmark” by which FI health is perceived in the market, Pratt says, and is the driver of their ability to continue to facilitate financial transactions. “We have already seen major acquisitions based primarily on access to domestic deposits, so the ability of FIs to capture deposits will be very instrumental to their success,” he explains.

“Deposit retention and acquisitions programs are central to the well being of DDA related income to all financial institutions, resulting in a renewed prioritization for remote deposit capture,” Pratt says. “Distributed capture, after all, is at its core a strategic means of acquiring deposits while lowering operational & processing costs.”

Banks that take maximum advantage of this opportunity to gain new deposits and solidify customer relationships via RDC stand to gain the high ground in the war for deposits, he concludes.

What do you think? Post your comments below.

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