PRS for MUSIC

Introduction

The Performing Rights Society (PRS) was founded in 1914 and is the UK’s leading collection society. Now called PRS for Music, it collects royalties through licensing agreements with music users and distributes them to 135,000 members worldwide. As well as making payments to its members, 95% of whom are writers and composers, PRS protects music rights, champions and funds new music, and influences public policy and legislation.

Challenge

PRS for Music was experiencing a high volume of returned payments, delays with payment related queries and a lack of visibility as to why payment returns kept reoccurring. PRS members based overseas were having their payments auto converted by their banks resulting in less than favourable exchange rates. The PRS issued a tender for proposals for a FX and Payments provider to handle all its international payments and ensure royalties were paid promptly and efficiently.

Solution

After winning the tender in 2015, GC Partners did a thorough analysis of PRS’s data, procedures and pain points. It then created a tailor-made system specific to the client’s needs, seamlessly integrating its mass payments platform with the PRS payment and beneficiary file data.

To comply with data protection regulation and privacy laws, the beneficiary bank details for PRS members were tokenised and linked to a unique beneficiary ID provided by PRS and then validated.

To reduce the number of returned payments, GC Partners enabled royalty payment and beneficiary file data to be pre-screened, validated and checked before the payments were distributed. This resulted in a 99% payment success rate. It meant data errors were highlighted and could be rectified before live payment runs, reducing the number of returned payments by over 75%.

To deal with the issue of payments in sterling, GC Partners built a system to automatically convert funds into the currency of the member’s account. It meant they’d benefit from more attractive exchange rates than banks generally offer and would avoid unnecessary fees due to the payment being made in the correct local currency. This has resulted in almost $2m in savings to members since the partnership began.

GC Partners developed a bespoke online portal for PRS, enabling its team to access and manage all payment run instructions and reporting in real time, including a comprehensive payments system. PRS staff members were given different access levels depending on their role and have the ability to add bank details and make payments through the encrypted portal.

PRS can now send a payment instruction enabling thousands of payments to be issued to beneficiaries in their chosen currency. All payments being time stamped and visible via the online portal and recorded for audit purposes. Should payments be rejected, they’re logged together with the reason (ie, the bank account has been closed) enabling PRS to rectify it.

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“GC Partners is constantly adding new features and updates which continue to benefit, improve and modernise the services we offer to our members.”Treasury Manager, PRS for Music