For the first, the Bank was faced with applying Composite Rate Tax or Withholding Tax to the accounts of retail customers. I was the IT representative for the feasibility study and we also used some hard headed business managers. We calculated the cost of providing an automated solution and implementing it. We also calculated the cost of implementing a manual solution. We also considered the disruption to other projects. During the study the question was asked, what was the Bank doing in the business of retail banking? We quickly concluded that the best solution was to close the accounts of the few retail customers that the Bank had. It was simply the cheaper option and made sense from a business point of view. The customers were encouraged to open retail accounts with a British correspondent bank. The cost of the feasibility study was minimal and we were able to concentrate on the business and IT aspects of implementing our Global International Banking system.
For the second, the business was interested in automating the re-investment of funds which appeared on the Bank's books as a result of the errors of other Banks. This was a large sum of money even on a daily basis and there was profit to be made from re-investing money which was in error whilst the back office traced the rightful owner of the funds. I performed a feasibility study to decide whether it would be economic to completely automate a solution but at the time there were technical difficulties which made complete automation too costly. I recommended that we shelved the the solution pending future technical improvements. Two years later I was at a meeting where the issue was raised again and an IT colleague produced my report : it was now technically possible to go ahead with the proposals. The business made some calculations that it was also economic to proceed so we went ahead.
These two examples show how a good feasibility study can be used to good effect to produce cost effective and beneficial results.
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