Informa Research Services, Inc.
Methodology for Cash Management Pricing:

Informa captures pricing from banks around the United States utilizing a nationwide network of mystery shoppers. Mystery shoppers are recruited by Informa to collect pricing from banks for a complete set of depository and cash management services.

Many banks tend to aggressively discount cash management pricing when other services are potentially on the table, especially loans. Other institutions are not nearly as aggressive. Therefore, to capture the best reflection of the price that most companies pay for cash management services, Informa instructs all of its shoppers to get quotes from prospective banks to inform the institution that they do not have any borrowing needs.

For most banks, pricing of cash management services is a volume business. The higher a customer's volume, the better price they receive from their bank. However, such volume-based discounts usually do not kick in until a company reaches $15-$20 million in annual sales. Furthermore, many interstate banks provide different pricing depending on a company's geographic location. Some banks have different pricing based on the state in which the master account is based, and others even have pricing variations by metropolitan area. Other institutions even have different pricing depending on whether the customer is based in a rural market versus a metropolitan area. There is a minority of interstate banks that have identical fee schedules, regardless of a business's geographic location. Such regional variations can be drastic or only modest; it all depends on the bank. For large corporations, most, if not all, banks have national pricing, regardless of the company's geographic location.

Generally, when a bank does have pricing variances based upon the geographic location of the business, these differences usually apply to monthly maintenance fees for demand deposit accounts, monthly and per-item charges for common services (information reporting, account reconciliation, wholesale lockbox, to name a few), and some other commonly incurred charges such as stop payments or wires.

Informa has identified three levels of pricing available to most business customers. These include:

• Standard pricing;
• Middle market pricing; and,
• Large corporate pricing.

A bank's standard pricing usually applies to the vast majority of a bank's cash management customers, and Informa has applied the term "small business" for this price point. Small businesses almost always pay the bank's printed (standard) price for their cash management services.

Some banks (about 20% of the top-50) have a separate, middle market price list. For other banks, their middle market customers pay the same standard price as their small business counterparts.

For large corporations, nearly all large banks provide a discount for cash management services.

Almost all of the top-10 banks go through a price-changing exercise once per year. Below the top-10, this practice is not nearly as consistent. Some banks may look at their pricing annually, but may not change any of their prices (or only a few fees) for years. In some cases, banks may not have changed their pricing for five years or more.

All of the pricing included in these averages represent the most current price offered by each of the banks that Informa regularly tracks.

• Informa's small business mystery shoppers represent companies with approximately $5-$10 million in annual revenue.
• Middle market shoppers represent companies with approximately 50-$75 million in annual revenue.
• Large corporate shoppers represent companies with approximately $500 million to $2 billion in annual revenue.