eBAM, for electronic Bank Account Management, is the set of standardised messages that lets a company and its banks exchange electronically the orders to open, modify and close bank accounts, as well as updates to signatories and signing authorities. It is built on the ISO 20022 formats (the acmt message family).
What is eBAM used for in practice?
eBAM replaces paper exchanges and signed letters with structured electronic messages. For a treasury team managing several entities and several banks, it answers three needs:
- Centralise mandates and signatories in a single, up-to-date referential.
- Trace every change of signing authority with a complete audit trail.
- Cut delays: a signatory update that took weeks through the paper circuit is processed in a few days.
What are the main eBAM messages?
The ISO 20022 standard defines several messages. The most used for mandate management are:
acmt.001: account opening request.acmt.002: amendment request (including signatories and signing authorities).acmt.003: account closing request.acmt.005/acmt.006: status reports returned by the bank.
Each message carries the identity of the entity, the account concerned, and the list of signatories with their rights.
How to manage your bank mandates effectively?
The difficulty is not the eBAM format itself, but the governance of signing authorities upstream: knowing who can sign what, at which bank, for which entity, and from which amount. Effective management rests on four principles:
- A single referential of entities, accounts, signatories and signing rules.
- Configurable approval workflows, adapted to each bank.
- Automated generation of the mandates, from the referential data.
- Periodic recertification of signing authorities, to stay compliant.
This is exactly the scope Kable covers: centralising bank signing authorities, generating the mandates and preparing the exchanges with the banks, without spreadsheets or a paper circuit.
Is eBAM mandatory?
No. eBAM is not a regulatory obligation: it is an exchange standard offered by banks. Adoption depends on each bank’s ability to support it. In practice, many companies start by centralising and structuring their bank signing authorities internally, then move to eBAM exchanges with the banks that support them. To go further, see how to delegate bank signing authority step by step.