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Banks continue to seek increased margins and fees for working capital and debt. At the same time, we are frequently seeing requests to increase money transmission tariffs.

Our experience is, however, that it remains a competitive market place and banks do want to lend to good quality covenants and retain existing or win new money transmission business. We continue to help clients reduce costs and if your bank has increased its income from lines of credit or charges then it is probably a good time to review the whole relationship to ensure that in overall terms pricing and charges remain competitive.

The economic downturn has hit the charity sector with most UK charities experiencing a fall in donation income.

This has driven charities to look harder for ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency. Focus on Banking has now worked with 15 major UK charities in the last two years and has been able to generate savings in banking and credit/debit card acquiring arrangements of well over £500,000.

The profile of procurement in local authorities has been raised in the last few years through a number of Government publications and reviews. All local authorities are now considering options for procuring good/services on a joint basis with neighbouring authorities.

Whilst undoubtedly for certain types of contracts, authorities will benefit from economies of scale, this does not necessarily apply to banking. In fact banks have tended to show little appetite for complicated joint contracts and will not usually offer discounts or reduced pricing when several authorities collaborate.

The ongoing shortage of liquidity in the market has seen the competition between banks for the client balances that law firms hold increase. At the same time, banks will often fail to offer competitive terms for balances already held. Given that banks are also restricting the use of Base Rate linked facilities and increasing margins and fees for credit lines, the dynamics of firms' bank relationships are fundamentally changing.

Maintaining and increasing client balances held has become a key target for banks and there has never been a better time to review relationships.

We have now worked with more than 65 of the UK’s largest professional firms and the number continues to grow.

Following the tightening of EU regulations for tendering public contracts, Local Authorities are now seeing more challenges to contract award decisions than ever before.

Although we are not aware of any recent challenges in respect of banking contracts, it is now vital to ensure that Bank Tender documentation clearly outlines the criteria and scoring methodology in order to avoid any potential challenge.

Focus on Banking has vast experience in tendering Local Authority banking contacts and we are familiar with how banks will respond to the questions asked. We are therefore able to devise bespoke scoring systems to ensure that the contract is awarded to the most appropriate bank. Without professional involvement in the production of evaluation criteria, Local Authorities face the risk of having to award a bank contract based on the evaluation scores even though in real terms the highest scoring bank does not offer the best value for money.