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Contract Negotiations

Negotiate from a position of strength with Cornerstone.

Secure the Best Terms. Save Millions.

For more than 20 years, banks and credit unions have relied on Cornerstone to assess their contracts, identify points of leverage and negotiate from a position of strength with vendors. If your organization wants to level the playing field at the negotiation table and get the best possible terms and pricing, contact us. We are uniquely positioned to help you maximize contract savings. We can also deliver a merger negotiation strategy and lead you through contract evaluations, product selections, and negotiation of final contracts.

Contract Negotiations - Pen

Our Approach

• Earnings-driven approach to track financial impact
• Employ the highest ethical standards
• Pursue an improved vendor relationship
• Partner with you as an extension of your team
• Formulate an aggressive, market-based negotiation based on data
• Focus on best-in-class legal terms
• Integrate and align with your current and future technology roadmap
• Conduct the due diligence so you can focus on operating your bank or credit union

Experience & Results You Can Trust

 

$6B+

 

Total negotiated contract deal value since 2019

1300+

 

Financial institutions served, including over half of Forbes’ Best Banks and CUs

$450M

 

In savings delivered to our clients this last year alone

650+

 

Contract negotiation engagements since 2019

Contracts and Vendors We Negotiate With

Contracts

Analytics HR Systems
ATM Item Processing
Bill Pay and P2P Loan Origination
Card Branding Mortgage Servicing
Content Management Online and Mobile Banking
Core Banking Systems Pin Network
Data Warehouse Telecom/Infrastructure
Debit and Credit Cards
Trust/Wealth
ECM Imaging  
 

Vendors

ACI Fiserv DNA
Alkami Fiserv FirstData
Banc Pac Fiserv Premier
COCC Fiserv Signature
Correlation Jack Henry
CSI Kony
DCI Mastercard
Finastra MDT
FIS Bankway NCR
FIS Horizon/Horizon XE PSCU
FIS IBS Q2
FIS MISER Synergent
FIS Modern Banking Temenos
FIS Systematics Visa
Fiserv Cleartouch  
Bold Solutions - Contracts
Services

Ensure Optimal Performance For All Your Major Contracts

Our multi-disciplinary team can assist with  every facet of your vendor negotiation, including selecting the right vendor, negotiating the most favorable contract pricing and terms, developing the best implementation strategy, and ensuring optimal performance. Our experience and knowledge of the vendor marketplace includes the major industry applications as well as how to assess them related major events such as mergers and acquisitions.

Core Systems

Our services include core selections and renewals and analysis of in-house vs. service bureau evaluations. We leverage more than 15,000 pricing data points acquired through numerous system selection negotiations, contract renewals and benchmarking engagements, along with our proven methodologies to get the most favorable contract pricing and terms for an institution — no matter the size.

Merger Contracts

We can deliver a technology negotiation strategy for mergers to assist clients with contract evaluations, product selections, and the negotiation of final contracts. While speed is often critical in mergers, we understand the need to base decisions on sound analysis. Our assistance focuses on required functionality, financial analysis, and the ability of legacy or new platforms to support the merged institutions’ combined volumes and critical business needs.

Debit and Credit Card

Card processing can be an opaque segment of the payments industry; we bring transparency and clarity to the processing fee negotiations. Our debit and credit card negotiation services include: Debit | ATM processing renewals, PIN POS networks, debit and credit selections and credit processing.

Visa and Mastercard

Cornerstone negotiates with Visa and Mastercard to assist our clients in benefiting from substantially higher incentives and lower fees. Our card branding negotiators assist our clients by soliciting bids and negotiating with the vendor(s) for market-ready agreements that reward our clients for their relationships with these vendors.

Digital Banking and Bill Pay

An institution’s digital banking platform is its most used and important channel. We help clients evaluate options and negotiate more cost-effective contracts to include enhanced product development. We know the vendors, the competitive landscape, and the emerging trends that enable clients to better anticipate the needs, preferences and desired functionality demanded by customers.

Ancillary Services — Loan, Deposit Origination, Trust, Item Processing

We assist clients to negotiate better pricing and terms for ancillary solutions to enhance their competitive positioning, whether through their core vendor or a third-party.

Data and Voice

Data and voice are often the most expensive line items in a technology infrastructure budget. Our market knowledge of pricing and peer benchmarking delivers bottom line savings and results that outperform the market.

ATM and ITM

Our ATM and ITM services include assisting with renegotiating existing service contracts, negotiating purchase price of a fleet of machines, soliciting bids on market offerings, and developing business case strategies and ROI analyses.

Technology Performance Management

For maximum performance for your bank or credit union, Cornerstone offers a specialized, multi-year negotiation engagement called Technology Performance Management (TPM). On average TPM clients achieve 32% better negotiation results than our clients who engage with us the traditional transaction-by-transaction way.

Cornerstone Advisors - Powered by Data 1
Platforms & Tools

Powered by Data

To be a top-performing financial institution, you need optimum market pricing and the best terms for all your contracts. But market information is not easily available to guide decisions that impact your bottom line. Through our extensive industry data, we know that not all contracts are created equal. That is why we deploy data and a powerful platform to get you the outcome you are looking for.

 

Contract Vault™ and Vendor Vault™

By combining our experienced negotiators, our proprietary data, and our vendor management platform, we are able to level the playing field for you, providing objective analysis on current market pricing, and delivering contracts that position you for success now, and into the future.

ContractVault-logo

Contract Vault™ is our proprietary data engine of over 15,000 pricing points collected from negotiating thousands of vendor contracts. Leveraging this information, our team of negotiators provides financial services executives with an objective analysis of market pricing and how it shifts with size, volume, and contract length.

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VendorVault-logo

Vendor Vault™ is our powerful, yet easy to use vendor management platform for ongoing vendor monitoring. It was specifically designed to help you stay on track and ensure you pass your exams. Vendor Vault™, provides data on hundreds of industry vendors serving the financial service market.

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PerformanceVault-logo

Performance Vault™ puts peer performance metrics at your fingertips and provides you with real-time analytics and insights to help you make data-driven decisions. It features more than 1000 productivity, revenue, and efficiency benchmarks that will enable you to drive high-performance levels across your entire enterprise.

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Results Achieved by Our Clients

61%

 

Saving achieved in core banking contract negotiations (FI with $6.8B in assets)

47%

 

Saving achieved in trust accounting contract negotiations
(FI with $14B in assets)

81%

 

Saving achieved in retail digital banking contract negotiations
(FI with $2.2B in assets)

Meet Your Negotiation Experts

Ryan Rackley - Headshot - Circle BNW

Ryan Rackley

Partner

As a partner at Cornerstone Advisors, Ryan Rackley leads a team of highly specialized technology contract negotiation consultants in the firm’s Contract Negotiation, Mergers & Acquisitions, and Payments practices. His more than 20 years in the financial services space have gained him authoritative expertise in vendor solutions sales and architecture. Ryan has personally negotiated more than 500 bank and credit union technology contracts.

Brad Mason - Headshot - Circle (1)

Brad Mason

Senior Director

Brad Mason expertly negotiates the complex strategic relationships between financial institutions and financial technology providers. Over the course of his career, Brad has led strategic business development at numerous major financial technology suppliers, an experience that has equipped him with keen insight into relationship negotiation, market and opportunity analysis, and coordinating cross-organizational teams for success.

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Niel Devasir

Managing Director

Niel Devasir brings more than 20 years of financial services executive leadership experience to his role as managing director in Cornerstone Advisors’ Contract Negotiation and Payments practices. Niel has a track record of building high-growth and operationally efficient companies by leading mergers and acquisitions, and overseeing operations, technology, corporate procurement, and analytics functions. 

 

Additional Resources