Each year for the past 23, the consultants at Phoenix Hecht have analyzed the movement (or the lack of) in bank prices. The latest Blue Book of Bank Prices, which covers price data from March 2010, offers treasurers some pretty good news. For 2010, list price increases average 2.2 percent; that’s against a jump in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) of 2.7 percent as of the end of last year. In contrast, bank prices rose an average of 3.6 percent for 2009, even though the Consumer Price Index at year-end 2008 showed overall inflation as almost nonexistent.

In fact, about 5 percent of the prices banks charged for their services actually dropped over the past year. Among the services that have become less expensive, on average: previous day and intraday balance reporting. Additionally, the rates charged for nearly two out of five services stayed the same between 2009 and 2010.

An executive summary of the report is available here. ###

Vendors bombard your IT group with ROI analyses that show how their technology will save you and/or make you enough money to offset its cost and deliver an attractive ROI. I frequently write these kinds of analyses. You can find examples here and here.

These are true as far as they go, but they usually leave out one thing — the cost of making the technology change itself. The consultants will include the cost of change management on their to-do checklists to make sure you are prepared to deal with those in the organization who are disgruntled over the upcoming change. Just as often, they will suggest you include some money for training. After that, you’re on your own.

Beyond these obvious items, there will be four more broad cost areas to which you should pay attention. more