Drawing on his knowledge of matter and market Jaap trains professionals and advises organizations on activities and decisions concerning giro payment systems. The people-oriented side of his activities.

Training Payment systems and services

At the request of NIBE-SVV, Jaap developed a broad and in-depth training programme for financial institutions, IT companies and regulators. The training course is modular in concept and covers all forms of payment systems, including interbank settlement, client behaviour, history and developments.

Information sharing and learning by doing
Based on his experience in both the financial sector and business world, Jaap has created an interactive programme consisting of ten half-day sessions. The first three sessions are optional and intended to bring participants up to date on domestic, international and Point of Sale (POS) (card/online) payment systems. During the remaining seven sessions, the participants examine a case about a fictitious international production company with both B2C and B2B sales and offices in multiple countries.

These sessions are interactive whereby the participants are required to analyse questions on the case and present their findings. Every session deals with one or more aspects of payment systems and interaction with other services executed by financial institutions such as debit and credit balances, financing, trade finance and Financial Exchange (FX) settlements. The training has been successfully given many times to a number of banks, clearinghouse and IT companies. Over the years more than 500 people have enjoyed and benefitted from the training.

Extracts from the training have been used for more specific internal courses by one of the regulators. In addition, elements of the curriculum have been incorporated in a tailored training and coaching programme at the Dutch Ministry of Finance, Fiscal Information and Investigation Service /Economic Investigation Service (FIOD/ECD) and Dutch Customs concerning the development, introduction and implementation of financial sanctions.

Selection of banks for a multinational

An American multinational requested assistance with the selection of new cash management banks. The company operates in 60 countries, where it has its own production and sales activities. The annual turnover is over $50 billion. Apart from salary payments, the entities’ payment system is B2B oriented and above all local. The organization uses over 700 accounts with over 30 different banks. The treasury operations are spread over three locations with different areas of know-how and visions. The selected banks had to ensure that cash management was concentrated with in-house banks while permitting optimal use of local payment systems. Moreover, the total costs had to be reduced and liquidity had to be made available via an efficient cashpool.

Scorecard measurability
The support, provided under the name of Orchard Finance, focused on assessing the proposals from the banks which provided good support for local payment possibilities. In addition, the quoted pricing and interest on debit and credit balances had to be checked against the going market rates. Further, the proposed cash management structure had to be assessed for feasibility, efficiency and costs.

To assess their proposals, a scorecard was compiled for each region (EMEA, APACS, LATAM and NA). This showed in a single overview how the quality and pricing of the banks compared with that of peers in the respective country. At the same time, it showed the feasibility of the proposed cash management structure.

The scorecard was then used to rank the offers for each country. The ranking produced an initial partitioning as a result of which the first negotiation round could be conducted more efficiently. After the second round of negotiations and evaluation of the revised offers, the final choice was made, thereby ensuring Share of Wallet was well allocated.

Thanks to this support, the American multinational is able to choose the right banks for its world-wide cash management both efficiently and effectively. In almost every instance, the local cash management was assigned to one of the partner banks without loss of quality. In addition, the exercise resulted in a substantial cost saving, all the more since it could be implemented quickly and efficiently.