Banks Lose Millions as Outdated Billing Drains the Bottom Line

Account analysis, a procedural chore tucked deep inside treasury operations, has traditionally been known mostly for producing dense monthly statements that few clients read and even fewer bankers enjoy explaining.

Safe to say it is one of the most overlooked functions in commercial banking.

But findings from the September 2025 Digital Financial Services Tracker® Series, a PYMNTS Intelligence collaboration with FIS, reveal that in today’s era of digital acceleration, tighter margins, and intensifying competitive pressure, this once-sleepy discipline is emerging as a surprisingly powerful driver of profitability.

The transformation of account analysis has been catalyzed by a convergence of forces: advances in automation and business intelligence, heightened client expectations for transparency, and a growing recognition that millions of potential revenue are lost each year through operational inefficiencies.

Every manual touchpoint introduces risk. Pricing tables get out of sync. Changes negotiated with sales teams never make it into billing. Services that should have been added are missed entirely. A client migrating to new digital tools may continue receiving outdated pricing for years because the operations team lacks an automated trigger to adjust fees.

According to the report, financial institutions lose an estimated $98.5 million annually from reconciliation inefficiencies alone. And unlike credit losses or market swings, this leakage is entirely preventable if banks can access accurate, real-time data about what their clients are using and how those services should be priced.

After all, legacy platforms were designed for an era when service offerings were narrower, transaction volumes lower, and product bundles relatively static.

Why the Status Quo Is No Longer Defensible

For years, banks tolerated the limitations of their billing systems because upgrading seemed too complex. Modernizing account analysis requires rethinking product catalogs, aligning pricing policies, cleaning data, and integrating with upstream and downstream systems. It is not glamorous work. But the cost of avoiding it has changed.

The consequences of maintaining ‘business as usual’ can ripple outward. Weak pricing governance has long plagued financial institutions, particularly in treasury management, where bespoke deals, manual overrides, and inconsistent rate updates can quietly erode margins. PYMNTS Intelligence estimated that, without strong pricing controls, banks may forfeit 5 percent to 15 percent of potential earnings, often without ever realizing the revenue existed. These are not hypothetical losses; they reflect systemic blind spots.

In contrast, modernized digital platforms can centralize service definitions, pricing schedules, usage data, and client entitlements into a unified, dynamic structure. Instead of relying on batch processes or manual reconciliations, banks can generate real-time insights into profitability and usage patterns. Pricing changes can be applied consistently across portfolios.

Read the report: From Back Office to Bottom Line: How Modern Account Analysis Empowers Treasury Management

Crucially, modern account analysis systems unlock strategic decision-making. Treasury teams gain visibility into which services drive margin, which client segments are underpriced, and where bundling opportunities exist. Relationship managers can engage with clients armed with data rather than assumptions. Product teams can identify adoption patterns and launch enhancements tailored to real-world behavior.

By automating data aggregation, service tracking, and fee application, these solutions eliminate many of the manual steps that cause delays and errors. More importantly, they generate unified, real-time data sets that allow banks to see, often for the first time, how clients interact with the full ecosystem of treasury services.

This shift also empowers banks to align more closely with corporate treasury trends. As businesses adopt real-time payments, embedded finance, and automated cash-management tools, banks need parallel data infrastructure to monitor usage, price fairly, and manage demand at scale. Modern account analysis becomes the connective tissue that makes this ecosystem work.

Modern account analysis is not simply about fixing billing. It is about understanding value—how it is created, delivered, and sustained. And in today’s banking landscape, that makes it a strategic priority.