Case Studies

• Sale of a Bank owned, payment scheme branded, company card portfolio

The process involved restructuring the client's payment portfolio away from the Bank's standard credit and debit P&L and creating a new limited company with the subsequent movement of the relevant assets. The portfolio was marketed to a short list of financial institutions and a prospective new owner was found. The price was negotiated over a period of two months and a term sheet agreed. A full migration was completed within three months with less than 7% customer attrition, which also included rebranding all of the cards. Subsequently, a post implementation review was completed and business support for the new owner was continued for a further six months.

• Bid management & migration of a multi market payment portfolio to an outsourced processor

A full cost based review was undertaken of the Client's payment portfolio being processed on an existing in-house platform together with a list of critical tariffs and Service Level Agreements. The continuation of processing in-house was seen not to be a viable option and research was undertaken with a view to seeking an external third party processor. A market review of the impacted countries, which included the geographical areas of Europe, South America and Asia, identified a number of potential providers but not one was able to satisfy all countries. The responses to an RFI confirmed that three different processors would need to be utilised and a multi level project plan was constructed. A team of Project Directors was assembled under the overall Bid Manager and a series of workshops and negotiations undertaken. This, and the planning process, took place over a 16 month period but lead to a very successful (customer feedback) migration over 5 months with virtually no customer attrition. The run rate saving for this business improvement was in excess of $17m pa.

• Purchase of international merchant acquiring portfolios

The Client's business strategy identified a number of countries in which they wished to expand existing business and some others where commencing an operation would prove to be beneficial. All the countries identified were researched in detail and a selected group of bank owned and third party specialist were contacted. A documented bid process was followed and negotiations continued in parallel together with Regulatory and Card Scheme applications being instigated. The outcome lead to a number of bank owned portfolios being purchased, together with one complete organisation. This enabled the Client to be more active in a range of new markets and achieved significant market share growth in others where they had previously been unsuccessful with their expansion strategy.

• New company launch

Our Client had created a unique internet based service proposition but was unsure how to bring this concept into a real service. The Bardow Group built a business case, researched the market sector and defined and established the needs for the first 24 months. A funding round was initiated with VC's private individuals and existing business investors. We continue to support this Client as non executive directors together with executive mentoring.