25-08-2012, 12:16 PM
Study of Cash management at Standard Chartered Bank
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ABSTRACT
In a business anything done financially affects cash eventually. Cash is to a business is what blood is to a living body. A business cannot operate without its life-blood cash, and without cash management, there may remain no cash to operate. Cash movement in a business is two-way traffic. It keeps on moving in and out of business. The inflow and outflow of cash never coincides. Important aspect which is unique to cash management is time dimension associated with the movement of cash. Due to non-synchronicity of cash inflow and outflow, the inflow may be more than the outflow or the outflow may be more than the inflow at a particular point of time. This needs regulation. Left to itself cash flow is apt to follow monsoonic pattern, and showers of cash may be heavy, scanty or just normal. Hence there is a dire need to control its movement through skillful cash management. The primary aim of cash management is to ensure that there should be enough cash availability when the needs arises, not too much, but never too little.
INTRODUCTION
Cash management is a marketing term for certain services offered primarily to larger business customers. It may be used to describe all bank accounts (such as checking accounts) provided to businesses of a certain size, but it is more often used to describe specific services such as cash concentration, zero balance accounting, and automated clearing house facilities. Sometimes, private bank customers are given cash management services.
Cash Management Services Generally offered
The following is a list of services generally offered by banks and utilised by larger businesses and corporations:
• Account Reconcilement Services: Balancing a checkbook can be a difficult process for a very large business, since it issues so many checks it can take a lot of human monitoring to understand which checks have not cleared and therefore what the company's true balance is. To address this, banks have developed a system which allows companies to upload a list of all the checks that they issue on a daily basis, so that at the end of the month the bank statement will show not only which checks have cleared, but also which have not. More recently, banks have used this system to prevent checks from being fraudulently cashed if they are not on the list, a process known as positive pay.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Web-based Cash Management
Finacle web-based cash management solution enables banks to offer comprehensive cash management services to businesses, ranging from small enterprises to large corporate houses.
Built on new-generation industry standard technologies J2EE and .NET, the modular solution provides corporate customers anytime, anywhere access to real-time consolidated information. It manages cash positions and electronically sends and receives funds in a secure
manner, within and across borders.
The solution is multi-currency enabled and offers multilingual support. It is also designed to support multiple channels including the Internet and mobile, and can be interfaced with disparate host systems and third-party applications.
Corporate Cash Management to benefit from Electronic Payments
The new electronic payment products and services offer the corporate clients an improved bottom line by helping manage cash requirements. It helps corporate to make the best use of their funds and provides an effective means of managing their financial requirements.
Several of the trends in cash flow forecasting favor the use of electronic payment products like RTGS, Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) and card payments. Improved technology and systems integration makes it more attractive to use electronic payment products because these methods of payment can be incorporated into firm-wide computing systems.
Cash Management Basics
Cash is your business's lifeblood. Managed well, your company remains healthy and strong. Managed poorly, your company goes into cardiac arrest.
If you haven't considered cash management an important issue, then you're probably undermining your business's short-term stability and its long-term survival. But how can you manage business cash better?
Start with understanding how good cash-management practices can influence your company's growth and survival by reading "The Art of Cash Management," Inc Finance Editor Jill Andresky Fraser's classic article on the topic. Then dive into forecasting your business-cash needs and learning how to handle a cash crisis. Assembled here are practical pieces of advice, tips and tricks from CEOs, and tools that you can use to get a handle on business cash.
INDUSTRY PROFILE
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE BANKING SECTOR IN INDIA
Banks are the most significant players in the Indian financial market. They are the biggest purveyors of credit, and they also attract most of the savings from the population. Dominated by public sector, the banking industry has so far acted as an efficient partner in the growth and the development of the country. Driven by the socialist ideologies and the welfare state concept, public sector banks have long been the supporters of agriculture and other priority sectors. They act as crucial channels of the government in its efforts to ensure equitable economic development.
The Indian banking can be broadly categorized into nationalized (government owned), private banks and specialized banking institutions. The Reserve Bank of India acts a centralized body monitoring any discrepancies and shortcoming in the system. Since the nationalization of banks in 1969, the public sector banks or the nationalized banks have acquired a place of prominence and has since then seen tremendous progress. The need to become highly customer focused has forced the slow-moving public sector banks to adopt a fast track approach. The unleashing of products and services through the net has galvanized players at all levels of the banking and financial institutions market grid to look anew at their existing portfolio offering. Conservative banking practices allowed Indian banks to be insulated partially from the Asian currency crisis. Indian banks are now quoting al higher valuation when compared to banks in other Asian countries (viz. Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines etc.) that have major problems linked to huge Non Performing Assets (NPAs) and payment defaults. Co-operative banks are nimble footed in approach and armed with efficient branch networks focus primarily on the ‘high revenue’ niche retail segments.