Commercial Payments

Within our Commercial Payments practice area, we work closely with our clients as they pursue the growth potential available in the commercial card and the expense process automation marketplace. We complete close to 30 commercial payments client engagements each year and have a deep understanding of the travel, purchasing, fleet, and small business sectors, including each sector’s products and performance characteristics

Services Offered
Our commercial payments engagements span strategy, market research, performance diagnostic assessments, commercial credit risk management, partnership marketing, and M&A advisory assistance.

Strategy Development: Clients value First Annapolis’s rigorous research and analytical approach to addressing challenges and evaluating opportunities in commercial payments. Recent engagement work has included:

• Working with multinational corporations to quantify opportunities from travel and purchasing expense automation and to complete request for proposals related to their corporate and p-card programs
• Representing clients on the buy side and sell side as they evaluate potential acquisitions and divestitures
• Analyzing commercial credit risk and recommending risk mitigation tactics for major commercial card issuers
• Evaluating new commercial payments market opportunities domestically and internationally
• Performing primary market research through customer surveys and through interviews with knowledge leaders
• Assessing sales and marketing strategies including how to optimize the bank and branch channels
• Performing card program diagnostic reviews
• Assisting clients in evaluating insourcing vs. outsourcing of selected data processing and card servicing functions

We are proud that many strategy engagements lead to requests for follow-on work due to clients’ confidence in and comfort level with our approach.

Partnership Marketing: In the current economic environment, we are witnessing a renewed emphasis on credit quality and customer loyalty, which highlights the value commercial card partnership arrangements can bring. We leverage our market knowledge to assist clients in selecting partners and exploring new sectors. In conjunction with this work, we bring our expertise in managing RFPs (including working closely with our clients’ sourcing and procurement professionals), performing scorecard assessments of potential providers, and negotiating term sheets and contracts.

Clients Served
We work with major corporations, financial institutions, payment associations, and technology and servicing specialists.