10 Reasons to Switch to an International Business Bank Account

Navigating the world of international finance and banking across multiple countries can be daunting for finance directors. A fragmented approach often leads to inefficiencies, increased costs, and potential compliance risks. However, there's a more efficient solution: consolidating these accounts into a single international business bank account. 

This streamlined approach offers numerous benefits, from enhanced financial oversight to significant cost savings and improved operational efficiency. By adopting an international business account strategy, companies can transform their financial operations, gain better control over cash flow, and make more informed strategic decisions. 

This blog post highlights ten key advantages of an international business account, demonstrating its potential to transform multinational companies’ financial management and position them for success in the global marketplace. 

1. Simplified oversight

A consolidated global business bank account provides finance directors with a comprehensive, single view of their company's financial position across all countries and currencies. This centralised approach eliminates the need to juggle multiple banking platforms or reconcile data from various sources, significantly reducing the complexity of financial management. 

By streamlining oversight, businesses can react quickly to market changes and maintain a clearer picture of their global financial health. Verto’s user-friendly platform simplifies finance operations unlike traditional banking portals.

2. Optimised liquidity management

Consolidating funds into a single international business bank account enables more efficient cash flow management across different currencies. This allows for better allocation of resources, reducing the need to hold excess cash in multiple accounts and potentially improving overall returns. 

With a clearer view of available liquidity, finance directors can make more strategic decisions about cash positioning, investment opportunities, and funding needs across the organisation. This optimised liquidity management can improve financial performance and reduce borrowing costs.

3. Reduced fees

Merging multiple overseas accounts into one global business bank account can significantly reduce international banking fees. Businesses can achieve substantial savings by minimising currency conversion fees and cross-border transfer costs. This eliminates the need for frequent inter-account transfers and reduces the overall number of transactions, leading to lower banking fees. 

Additionally, the increased volume of transactions through a single platform may provide leverage for negotiating more favourable fee structures with the banking provider.

With Verto, users can access multiple local payment schemes from the same account to both pay out and receive money from customers. The benefit being that local payment schemes are always cheaper than international SWIFT payments. 

When receiving money via a local payment scheme, Verto users get paid in the currency they are sent, and have flexibility to convert to another currency when they want to. Plus, with our transparent rates, users get visibility of the exchange rate. Traditional banks often hide fees and charge extortionate exchange rates, and therefore one global account with Verto can save users money on transaction fees. 

4. Better exchange rates

By consolidating foreign exchange volume through a single international business account, as well as using specialised FX marketplaces, companies can often access more competitive rates than using multiple local banks. This improved pricing power comes from the increased transaction volume and the ability to negotiate better terms with a single provider.  With traditional banks, there isn’t a high level of competition which is often why their exchange rates are notoriously bad. This is why fintechs need to be competitive, so they have lower currency exchange rates. 

Better exchange rates can lead to significant cost savings on currency conversions, particularly for companies with high volumes of international transactions, ultimately improving the bottom line and enhancing global competitiveness.

With Verto, users can mitigate currency rate fluctuation risks by converting to and holding less volatile currencies until you need to make a payment in a more volatile currency.

5. Streamlined operations

A single global business bank account allows easier payment automation and seamless integration with existing financial systems such as accountancy software. This streamlining reduces manual work, minimises the potential for errors in managing multiple accounts, and increases overall operational efficiency. 

By centralising financial operations, businesses can standardise processes across different regions, improve coordination between departments, and allocate resources more effectively. The result is a more agile and responsive financial function that can better support the company's global business objectives.

6. Enhanced reporting

Consolidated international business accounts provide more comprehensive and consistent financial reporting across all currencies and regions. This enhanced reporting capability gives businesses better insights into their global economic position, enabling more informed decision-making. 

Finance directors can access real-time data on cash positions, transaction histories, and currency exposures across the organisation. The ability to generate standardised reports across different countries and currencies also simplifies compliance processes and improves financial analysis and forecasting quality.

7. Improved security

Managing security and access for a single international business bank account platform is generally easier and more robust than overseeing multiple accounts across various banks and countries. This consolidated approach allows centralised control over user permissions, authentication protocols, and transaction approvals. 

It boosts the overall security posture of the company's financial operations, reducing the risk of fraud and unauthorised access. Moreover, it simplifies implementing and maintaining consistent security policies across the organisation such as segregation of duties to reduce both external and internal fraud risk.

8. Time savings

Consolidation significantly reduces the time spent on account reconciliation, fund transfers between accounts, and managing relationships with multiple banks. Finance teams can focus on more strategic activities rather than administrative tasks associated with maintaining numerous overseas accounts. 

The streamlined processes and automated workflows enabled by a single international business account lead to increased productivity and efficiency. Such time savings can be highly valuable for finance directors, allowing them to dedicate more resources to analysis, strategy, and value-adding activities.

With Verto, when using our Local Account feature, you can get local account details to receive payments from your customers in different currencies instantly, and therefore make faster payments to your suppliers when local rails are used.

9. Simplified compliance

An international business bank account can make it easier to maintain regulatory compliance across different jurisdictions than navigating varying requirements for multiple overseas accounts. This simplified approach reduces the complexity of adhering to diverse international banking regulations and reporting requirements. 

It also facilitates more consistent application of internal controls and compliance policies across all financial operations. For finance directors, this means reduced compliance risk, easier audits, and potentially lower costs associated with regulatory adherence.

10. Strategic cash positioning

With a consolidated view of global finances through a single global business bank account, companies can make more informed decisions about where to position cash for maximum benefit and returns. This planned approach to cash management allows businesses to optimise their liquidity, take advantage of investment opportunities, and minimise idle cash. 

Finance directors can more easily identify excess funds in one region that could be used to support operations or investments in another, leading to improved overall financial performance and more efficient use of the company's capital.