Treating Banks Like All Other Vendors

You Should Frequently Audit Bank Fees Like Any Other Vendor Invoice

If you choose not to read beyond this paragraph, leave knowing that you are likely overpaying for your bank services, and it is imperative for your team to create a cadence of reviewing the costs of your bank relationships.

As a method of ensuring control while preventing fraud, companies like yours have put in place extensive Accounts Payable processes before paying any type of vendor for the goods and services they provide, including:

• Invoice received
• Goods or services confirmed
• Pricing verified against contract
• Payment scheduled per terms
• Final approval and release

There is no reason that a bank should be treated differently from other corporate vendors. Banks Are Vendors Too. So, Why Don’t We Treat Them That Way?

Banks (despite providing critical cash management services) often bypass this scrutiny entirely.

Instead of invoices, banks issue account analysis statements. These reports summarize monthly services, volumes, and charges. Yet across more than 100 corporate-bank relationships we’ve reviewed, only six companies applied even a basic vendor-style approval process before paying their banks.

Common Reasons Teams Skip Review

Why do treasury teams let this slide? Here are the most common reasons we’ve heard from cash managers and treasurers:

• “There is no simple way to validate and confirm that the volume of activity reported on each service line item listed on the account analysis is what our company actually processed at the bank.”
• “The bank is paid via auto-debit each month. There’s no actual payment for us to make.”
• “The account analysis is system generated, so I would expect there to be few, if any, mistakes or errors.”
• “We believe a spot check of month-over-month totals is sufficient.”
• “ECR and associated earnings credits usually offsets most of the fees anyway.”
• “It’s not a priority for us — our team does not have time/resources to do it.”

Are these valid business reasons, or excuses?

What Redbridge Found: Billing Errors Are Common and Costly

Let’s explore just one of those beliefs:

“It’s system-generated. There shouldn’t be many errors.”

Our analysis tells a different story. On average, we uncover 4.68 billing errors per 100 line items across account analysis statements. These issues include:

• Incorrect calculations
• Unapproved pricing or ECR changes
• Inconsistent pricing for identical services across accounts
• Volume-based tier discounts not applied
• Unauthorized services added

Based on our review of more than 300 account analyses, the average error rate is $54.44 per $1,000 in gross fees.

That means if your company pays $50,000 in monthly bank fees, you could be losing $2,722 per month — or $32,664 annually — to billing violations that could be avoided.

How to Take Back Control (with HawkeyeBSB)

There are many reasons why your treasury department might start using a specialized tool to monitor bank fees. These could include automating a tedious procedure, preparing for a renegotiation of your bank fees, or ensuring a pricing structure is being applied correctly.

Redbridge created HawkeyeBSB, our bank fee monitoring platform, to solve this problem.

HawkeyeBSB automates the tedious task of auditing account analysis statements. Once your bank files are uploaded, the system scans for exceptions, billing violations, and pricing errors which gives you visibility and control with minimal effort from AP or Treasury.

Whether you use HawkeyeBSB or a manual process, the important thing is to act. Monthly bank fee reviews should be non-negotiable because your banks are vendors.

Redbridge clients typically uncover 20–40% in fee reductions through monthly audits and vendor-level oversight.

Let’s talk about how we can help you get the same results.