Feeding the Commercial Card Programs Pipeline

Consistent portfolio growth requires more than passive organic momentum. It takes intentional focus, disciplined execution, and actionable next steps tied to the opportunities that matter most. The financial institutions that consistently expand their portfolios, both by winning new programs and deepening existing ones, tend to share one habit in common: they’ve built the reporting and KPI discipline to know exactly where to focus their energy. The good news is that this kind of insight doesn’t require an overhaul. It starts with a handful of recommended reporting best practices and enablement activities, applied consistently, month over month.

Below, we’ve laid out the reporting and KPI framework we most often recommend to issuing banks, organized around the two places growth tends to come from: new program opportunities, and the programs you already have.

Fueling the New Program Pipeline

One of the first areas most financial institutions focus on is how to identify and cultivate new commercial card program clients. Identifying the right prospects and knowing how to right-size the opportunity before the first conversation, makes new business development far more efficient.

Prime Industry Targets

Certain industries consistently show strong fit for commercial card programs in both purchasing and in acceptance. We recommend prioritizing:

• Medical (hospitals, healthcare groups, dental)

• Higher education (private universities and community colleges)

• Public sector (cities, counties, school districts)

• Private and charter schools

• Manufacturing and distribution

• Professional services (energy, mechanical, HVAC, logistics)

• Financially strong corporations

Projecting Spend Based on Company Financials

Revenue size and employee count offer a reliable early read on card opportunity, well before a deeper analysis is needed:

• 5%–10% of annual revenue is a reasonable estimate of potential annual spend opportunity. For example, a company with $10MM in annual revenue might represent $500K–$1MM in potential annual spend volume.

• 30%–40% of AP spend (excluding payroll), when looking at total annual payables, offers a second lens on the same opportunity.

Best practice: request an annual A/P spend file from the commercial client to run a match-and-payables analysis, alongside annual or monthly employee expense data. Together, these give you a much clearer picture of projected annual spend and help in right-sizing the monthly credit line needed from day one.

Prime Client Targets Within the Bank

Some of the richest opportunities often sit inside relationships the bank already has. We recommend reviewing:

• The bank’s top 100 commercial clients (deposits and loans) who do not yet have a commercial card program established with you

• Clients who hold their operating and treasury management services with the bank where the commercial card program offering is a natural fit to have a full cash management suite for cash, liquidity, A/R and A/P consolidated on strategy

• Clients with a high number of debit cards on their commercial checking account are missing the working capital component and greater spending power with greater controls for employee spending tied to expenses

• All top client prospects currently engaged with a commercial relationship manager or treasury management officer to ensure that working capital discussions and capturing the opportunity on payables spend are being captured and addressed for the client

It’s also worth reviewing monthly utilization rates within your existing Small Business (SMB) card portfolio. SMB programs running at or above 50% of their maximum allowed credit line, alongside company revenue size, industry, and credit strength, are often the clearest signal of a client ready for an expanded conversation.

Partnering Roles to Execute These Opportunities

None of this works in a silo. The opportunities above come together best when commercial relationship managers or lenders, treasury management officers, and a commercial card subject matter expert are working the pipeline together.

Best practice: hold bi-weekly touch-base calls to keep the pipeline and action items current, with all three roles actively referring uncovered opportunities to one another and proactively inviting each other into client meetings in support of the client’s broader needs.

Strengthening Existing Commercial Card Programs

The second, and often faster, path to growth is right in front of you: the programs you already have within the existing commercial card program portfolio. A disciplined look at portfolio performance frequently uncovers retention risk, underutilized potential, or an easy expansion conversation.

Prime Client Targets Within the Existing Portfolio

We recommend sorting the existing commercial card portfolio by:

• Top 10 aggregate YTD spend programs, which usually represent close to, or more than, 50% of the entire portfolios spend. These are your clearest retention and expansion targets.

• Programs with monthly utilization rates at or above 50%, which may be processing interim payments to keep credit availability moving for themselves, a client pain point, and often the most receptive to setting up a program or relationship review meeting.

• Programs with monthly utilization rates below 15%, worth asking: was more spend opportunity identified when the program started, and would client education or consulting help bring the program up to a healthier 30%–40% utilization range?

To put these segments to work, monthly utilization rate on the client’s commercial card credit line needs to be a standing KPI in your monthly commercial card spend reporting. Without it, these opportunities are much harder to see.

Partnering Roles to Execute These Opportunities

The same collaborative model applies here: commercial relationship managers or lenders, treasury management officers, and a commercial card subject matter expert, meeting bi-weekly to keep the pipeline and action items moving, and proactively referring and co-attending client meetings together.

Program Optimization Opportunities: Gained Efficiencies

Beyond pipeline and portfolio segmentation, growth and retention are also shaped by how well the program itself is running. The technology, tools, platforms, and strategies that help a program fully realize its efficiency benefits include:

• Process savings and automation

• Reduction in procurement cycle time

• Improved working capital and cash flow

• Education on disputes, chargeback rights, and liability waiver insurance

Program Expansion Opportunities: Spend Growth

Finally, it helps to track the metrics that most directly reflect spend growth activity, so you can see momentum (or the lack of it) as it happens:

• Purchase volume spend

• Transaction volume

• Number of cardholders and card accounts

• Number of accepting suppliers

• Additional commercial card products and technology offerings that would benefit the client and their payment process workflows

Bringing It All Together

None of these reporting practices or KPIs need to be built all at once, and they don’t need to be built alone. The institutions that get the most value from this framework tend to treat it as a living part of their program: reviewed monthly, refined as the portfolio grows, and shared across the partnering roles who act on it.

If you’re reviewing this list and wondering where to start, or which reporting and KPI activities could have the greatest impact on your program, we’d be happy to help. Building recommended portfolio reporting and enablement activities is exactly the kind of work we do with issuing banks every day, from designing the right KPI framework to helping teams put it into action.

Reach out and connect with a Scale team member today to talk through where your program stands and how we can help you build the reporting and KPI activities that will fuel your next stage of growth. We’d love to partner with you.

– Co-Founders Julie Schmitz and Nicole Slay.