Correspondent network rationalisation for a global payments provider
A global payments provider set out to rationalise a sprawling correspondent network, freeing trapped liquidity and reducing concentration risk across key corridors.
- Client
- Global payments provider (anonymised)
- Practice
- SWIFT & cross-border payments
- Services
- Correspondent banking
The challenge
Over years of organic growth and market expansion, this global payments provider had accumulated a sprawling correspondent banking network. Utility across relationships was uneven, concentration risk had built up in certain corridors, and capital sat trapped across a long tail of underused nostro accounts.
Without a structured view of the network, it was difficult to tell which relationships were pulling their weight and which were simply legacy.
Our approach
Run Ventures assessed the correspondent network relationship by relationship, evaluating concentration risk, account utility and service quality against the provider's actual payment flows.
From that assessment, we advised on which relationships to strengthen, which to consolidate and which to exit, alongside a nostro/vostro reconciliation and liquidity-optimisation review to surface where working capital was sitting idle rather than in use.
The outcome
The provider emerged with a leaner, better-understood correspondent footprint, with relationships sized and structured to match how payments actually moved rather than how the network had simply grown.
A disciplined reconciliation process gave treasury and operations teams ongoing visibility into account positions, replacing ad hoc checks with a repeatable discipline for keeping the network under control.
This is an illustrative, anonymised composite case study.
Facing a similar SWIFT decision?
Reviewing a correspondent network that has grown faster than it has been managed? Our consultants can walk through an assessment against your actual payment flows.