RBS is pulling out of global transaction services, giving its business to BNP Paribas. Was Basel III one reason for the move?
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) earlier this year announced it was closing its international global transaction services (GTS) operations for customers outside the UK and Ireland. And just recently the bank announced it would be referring its GTS clients to BNP Paribas.
Following a string of bad earnings reports and bad overall 2014, RBS decided to pull up stakes internationally, saying the costs of maintaining a global footprint were too much. As a result, the bank will pull out of 25 of the 38 countries it services. But according to Bob Stark, VP strategy at Kyriba, another reason for the pullout could be that looking ahead, the bank likely determined that Basel III’s liquidity rules, i.e., the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR), would further increase the costs of doing business.
Mr. Stark, writing recently in a blog post, says many observers have focused on the bank’s significant losses in 2014, the fact that it is majority owned by the UK government, as well as its eroding global market share as leading factors for the pullback. However, Mr. Stark says what hasn’t been discussed is that “RBS made an astute business decision in the face of upcoming Basel III compliance. It is quite likely that RBS saw that costs to support its corporate clients in a post-Basel III environment would make profitability within corporate banking impossible to achieve.”
The LCR of course has thrown many banks for a loop, and is having them rethink their product offerings. LCR is the rule requiring banks to have enough liquidity to manage a cash run-off in a 30-day period. This means that the expected run-off rate will need to be offset by the bank holding low-return High Quality Liquid Assets (HQLA). The run-off rate varies depending on the industry sector of the depositor (corporates vs. financial institutions), the term of the deposit (under 30 days vs. over 30 days) and the usage of the funds (operating vs. non-operating), with little clarification on how to define the latter, which in turn leads to different interpretations from bank to bank.
Basel III also introduced a new leverage ratio to prevent banks from over-leveraging their balance sheet. Although not fully implemented yet, both changes increase the cost of holding deposits and providing financing in the long term.
“A large component of [RBS’s] corporate cash management deposits would have been non-operational cash – meaning they would have had to incur high costs to add sufficient collateral to meet the LCR provisions,” Mr. Stark said. “This wasn’t viable, so (we assume) they made a smart business decision: abandon the deposits and refocus resources on more profitable segments.”
Many had suspected RBS might be rethinking global when Carole Berndt, whom the bank poached from Bank of America Merrill Lynch last year, suddenly took off for ANZ Bank. Still it was it was unexpected by some treasurers. Two members of The NeuGroup’s European Treasurers’ Peer Group (EuroTPG) said in a conference call that the move by RBS was “a bit of a surprise.” Both members had only fairly recently engaged the bank for its GTS offerings and both said the bank had given them assurances that they were in it for the long haul.
“Backing out will … cause disruption,” said one of the treasurers. The other said it was an issue but also an opportunity. “Replacing RBS for Western European cash management will take time,” the treasurer said, “but it will also be an opportunity to integrate SWIFT into work streams and interface with the ERP” as well as a new treasury management system the company is implementing.
It will also be an opportunity for BNP Paribas. At the beginning of July, both banks announced that RBS had engaged BNP to “act as the ‘referral bank’ for its cash management and trade finance clients.” RBS will receive no compensation, nor will any money change hands, according to sources, and both banks have been working together to ensure a seamless and simplified process for RBS customers that choose to migrate to BNP.
In a statement, Pierre Fersztand, global head of cash management at BNP, said his bank had “invested in a dedicated onboarding program to facilitate a simplified migration process and will continue to invest in the development of our cash management expertise alongside our colleagues on the trade finance side. Our networks are joining forces to welcome, onboard and serve these new clients.”
It remains to be seen if any corporates take up the referral offer. One treasurer at a European corporate said he’d received the notification of the BNP referral, but the bank wouldn’t get any special attention and that it would be considered like any other RFPing bank. “BNP is part of our bank relationship group and RFP audience,” he said, so, “we will consider this element as part BNP’s overall response and RFP score.”