Corporate to Bank connectivity and information exchange has long been an issue. However, it was not until recently that corporates have started to question the value of their investments in this area.

Driven by tighter regulation and the need for better cash management and effective working capital management, they want to have better insight into their cash positions and forecasts.

Globalisation is creating more complexity as corporate cash managers have to deal with an increased number of banking relationships and local banking practices
Centralisation of finance processes in shared service centers has led to an increased need for standardising the connectivity from banks to corporates. The implementation of central payment factories and cash management 'hubs' has put pressure on banks to come with new services
Compliance requirements require better internal controls. Having solid, secure and reliable corporate to bank interfaces will facilitate this

The drivers for corporates are quite simple: save costs, comply with regulation, create value.

Oracle's Financial Gateway solution offers the centralised framework for payments processing that both banks and corporates can buy into. It enables a corporate to manage all payments from a single platform, and helps with the preparation, formatting, validation, approval and release of clean payment instructions to the bank or external payment system. For more details of how this approach takes Corporate/Bank connectivity to the next level, supporting the straight-through-processing of payments originating in ERP systems or via web-services see the Corporate to Bank Connectivity Oracle Whitepaper.