We make a lot of foreign payments using Royline for Windows (Royal Bank of Scotland). There are many things I do not particularly like about this system but it is installed and it works ' so I leave it be. I understand that the Royline system is due to be changed / merged / replaced by/with the Nat West banking system at some stage and this is an opportunity to look at whether we stay or go (the efficiency of the forign payments facility plays a big part in the bank we chose).
One of our major issues is the size of our database of foreign beneficiary bank details (rather big). I can access the Royline database through excel but it is encrypted and I need to manipulate it with a macro to un-encrypt it to be able to update the database I use to confirm details with beneficiaries. This is all very inefficient for us.
Does anyone have any experience of banking systems with an easy-to-access database of beneficiary details and, if so, is the system as a whole efficient for the user (rather than the bank).
Ruth Ballinger
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Overseas payments.... a new solution.
The issues of Bank's proprietory software serving their own needs rather than the needs of their customers is one which has been investigated by my Company over the last 4 years. We have many of the online systems and have found some faults or shortcomings with all of them despite assurances from each and every Bank that their software is "the best!" Do not expect Nat West Bank's system (or any other)to be without shortcomings as their system is not integrated between the purchasing of the currency on 'Comet' and the processing of the payment through 'Bankline'. You will have to manually transfer your currency deals between currency accounts before processing. We have utilised all the systems on offer in the U.K. and following this have devised a method of overcoming these 'problems' by effectively amalgamating the best from each system and providing a multi-bank service which actually nullifies any Bank Transaction charges when making overseas payments of Sterling-based liabilities. Foreign payments is a service which lends itself (quite easily) to outsourcing.
You should not have to change your Bank merely because the overseas payments service is not up to standard!...there is another solution. Take a look at this web-site for more information: http://www.intellexonline.com
Also searching for a good bank
This seems like a gap in the market. Are any of the foreign banks competing in this area?
If they perform one is back to the first problem of the time delay on money transfers operated by the UK banks without paying for instant transfers.