What’s new in the world of corporate banking in 2025? Businesses continue to grapple with an uncertain economic and geopolitical environment, further complicated by recent tariff policies. Over the last few months, the USA has been introducing multiple new duties that impact raw materials and supply chains across critical sectors. As corporate treasurers contend with greater financial uncertainty, renegotiated supplier terms, and reduced flexibility in managing cash flow, they need efficient cashflow forecasting tools to ensure resilient financial operation. It is time for commercial banks to deliver the kind of real time, agile, and advanced visibility into liquidity and cash flow that corporate treasurers need to stay ahead of disruption.

Bridging the Gap with Account Analysis Modernization

The problem is, while 60% of banks recognize real-time account balance visibility as essential, only 41% are able to deliver it. Nearly 49% emphasize the importance of cash flow forecasting, yet just 38% can meet client expectations in this area. Similarly, 46% cite transparency as a key priority, but only 32% can provide it effectively.

But the good news is that banks do not have to reinvent the wheel to deliver the value demanded by treasurers. All they need to do is modernize a much-neglected legacy process – account analysis. For decades, this served as an essential, but static, billing mechanism that focused on processing accurate invoices for corporate clients. By transforming this crucial back-office function, banks can deliver real-time account balance information, enable accurate cash flow forecasting, and ensure precise service charge computation.

What’s Holding Banks Back from Modernizing Account Analysis?

Nearly half the banks surveyed know that their existing account analysis function does not serve the evolving needs of their customers, but more of them are hesitant to overhaul this process. Some of this reluctance stems from perceived complexity of the task. After decades of functioning in the same way, banks consider the prospect of change to be daunting. Modernization requires standardizing products, billable codes, and structures across silos that challenge cultural norms and operational habits. They expect key processes to be disrupted and are afraid of delays or errors in the final product.  And they anticipate integration and reconciliation challenges as legacy systems rely on batch data, while modern functions need real-time data via APIs or streaming.

Translating Modernization Goals into Actionable Steps

Banks can break down the modernization effort into key objectives and the steps required to achieve results. With a modernized account analysis function banks can deliver:

• Instantaneous cash flow snapshots

• Self-service fee and account analytics

• Efficient transparency that delights clients and lightens operational loads

And to do each of these, they need responsive, agile processes that:

• Support near-real-time data ingestion (APIs, streaming) instead of daily or monthly batch updates.

• Expose insights to customer-facing systems such as CRM platforms or online portals, allowing clients to track balances, fees, and performance dashboards directly.

• Use APIs for secure data-sharing and interoperability across platforms.

Taking a Phased, Approach to Transformation

Once the objectives and steps are identified, banks must take a phased and risk-aware approach to account analysis transformation. This will mitigate risk, enable incremental ROI, and lay the foundation for broader change.

• Begin with minimal viable replacement or identify high-impact, high-priority functions to change instead of low-risk, low-value ones. This includes critical value delivering features like

• Real-time balances

• Forecasting dashboards

• Fee renewal automation

• Implement short-term projects lasting 3-6 months to upgrade rate management or billing codes

• Start with specific deployments such as billing for new services (e.g., carbon offsets or business banking packages), before full-scale transformation

Finally, banks must consider their deployment models. Software as a Service (SaaS) models ensure agility, continuous updates, and cost efficiency. It delivers a range of benefits ranging from faster onboarding to effortless maintenance and continuous feature enhancements. Banks can accelerate time-to-value and stay agile in a rapidly evolving market.

A modernized account analysis function can prove to be a key differentiator for banks as competition intensifies, and organizations race to deliver value to their customers. A strategic, phased approach to transforming account analysis can ensure business as usual while unlocking real-time insights, enable smarter forecasting, and delivering the transparency that corporate clients demand. Account analysis may have been overlooked for decades, but in 2025, it holds the key to delivering next-generation value in commercial banking.