EXCLUSIVE— One of the largest draws for a credit card is its #rewards program—an area #banks have been competing in for decades. But will the approach #need to #change as more consumers chose to bank exclusively on #mobile? For Citibank, the answer is no. The bank is going to focus on integrating the rewards program […]
Bank Innovation
Yogi Berra had it right.
Nevertheless, I would like to share some of my impressions about the issues that will be top-of-mind for #banking executives this year.
Originally posted to my Forbes.com blog, these thoughts came together as a result of the various experiences and conversations I’ve had with clients over the past 12 months.
People will have their own opinions and in the end, I may be proven wrong. Regardless, I welcome lively discussion and discourse. Here are 10 trends to keep an eye on in 2018.
The post 10 trends that could change the shape of banking in 2018 appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
Last time we introduced some core ‘beliefs’ that are key to successful #culture #change. Now we’re going to look at these beliefs in a bit more detail: In particular, what’s the role of the individual in culture change?
To gauge how successfully their change programmes are progressing, #organisations need to understand what’s going on enterprise-wide. There are various ways they can do that, from tracking what people are actually doing—their day-to-day functions—through to in-depth behavioural analytics. All of that provides a good basis for benchmarking the maturity level of the organisation, deciding how to measure success and, of course, how to move the dial.
Those insights inform how organisations prioritise the design of change programmes around structure, people and behaviours. Crucially, it helps them think about designing the appropriate structure for driving the change the organisation needs.
It’s only with the right structure that people’s behaviours—including decision-making, empowerment and lowering the centre of gravity—will start to change. Once people have more empowerment through the new structure, they need to learn how to use this to behave more productively.
This is where small, incremental changes come into their own. As people begin to do things differently, this becomes a form of habit. And as that #happens, new behaviours start to permeate the enterprise and become embedded. Think about this as a cycle—from understanding to design to structures—all geared to enabling people to behave differently and make changes to how they operate.
To bring this to life, think about the incremental changes that an organisation might want to set in motion. A great example? The number of people that typically attend meetings. This can easily be changed so only people with the opportunity to make a decision actually go along.
If a staff member and their direct superior are both scheduled to attend, they need to make sure that only one of them goes. Otherwise, it sends out the signal that there’s a lack of delegation. It also shows that people are not sufficiently empowered.
The follow-on? Whoever does attend must make a decision. That’s more efficient for everyone. There’s no need for a follow-up meeting. Incremental changes like these help to encourage a culture where people have more confidence in their own judgement.
Other focuses for incremental change could be the time it takes to get new products or services to customers—or introducing greater customer-centricity. Whatever the objective, it’s all about being able to continuously rework an organisation’s structure in pursuit of a particular goal, rather than having to do a major restructuring once every five years.
One priority will be the creation of agile, multi-disciplinary teams formed to solve specific customer problems with a scrum-style approach. This too comes back to analytics, of course. For these teams to come together with the right capabilities, organisations need to know what’s going on enterprise-wide.
Using analytics, they can get those insights and use them to carry out the workforce planning that’ll ensure they get the right skills through the door for those teams and rapidly pivot the organisation to adapt to new situations.
Also, a connected point, individuals need to take more responsibility for their own skills so they can continue to be relevant. The emphasis is on people planning their own careers, rather than relying on management to do that for them. If employees have universal skills, then they’ve got applicability to a whole range of situations, not just a single role.
A good way forward is for the business to think about developing an internal consultancy function, which can be hired on a project-by-project basis. Designing in that kind of flexibility puts the emphasis on individuals to really understand their worth, short and long term. This new kind of enterprise is less paternalistic than what went before. And it’s much more dynamic.
Employees actively want a gig career, where they evolve a portfolio of skills and keep on learning new ones. And older people within the organisation are often, perhaps counterintuitively, more receptive to this new way of working. They acknowledge that they’re not digital natives, and as a result may feel disconnected, from their co-workers and quite possibly their children. The moral? Don’t make assumptions about the workforce.
Circling back to where we started, it’s all about setting the direction for change, making sure everyone in the organisation knows they have a role to play in that change, and crucially, continuously tracking progress towards clearly defined objectives.
Thanks for reading.
The post Culture change happens when organisations are transformed by people appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
#Banks have witnessed a spate of cyber breaches recently with the financial sector experiencing 300 percent more cyberattacks than any other industry. More than 75 cyberattacks against financial services companies were reported in first nine months of 2016.
A string of regulations requiring banks to adopt a more open architecture will further expose them to heightened cybersecurity risks, and the rapid pace of digitization in banking will only add to it.
However, the banking industry is yet to see an increased responsibility in the role of a Chief Information Security officer (#CISO). A study by Gartner showed that only 20 percent of CISOs report to the CEO with ~60 percent of them reporting to the Chief Information Officer (CIO) or an IT executive. With the growing #importance of security in an organisation, this current reporting structure might need to #change more to favour CISOs reporting directly to the CEO.
There have been instances of uneven allocation of the IT budget for spend on cybersecurity, resulting in CISOs getting a smaller piece of the pie. Studies have shown that information security takes only a tiny three to five percent of the overall IT budget.
UK banks have seen some traction here: Barclays has merged its two security functions, with previous Chief Security Officer (CSO) and CISO roles coming together under a combined CSO. Lloyds has set up a cybersecurity advisory panel to bring an industry perspective on key cyber-related activities and threats. The panel is part of a subcommittee to the Board Risk Committee (BRC) and the Chief Risk Officer regularly informs the BRC of the aggregate risk profile of the bank.
Having the CISO report outside of the IT leadership could have several advantages:
IDC believes that by 2018, increases in cybersecurity threats could result in 75 percent of CSOs and CISOs reporting to the CEO. Some regulators are even making it mandatory: In Israel, there are laws dictating that CISOs report directly to the CEO. UK banks should take a cue and become the financial services gold standard in cybersecurity governance.
The primary goal of the CISO is not to protect #technology but to protect the business. Though the position has risen in the organisational structure to the inner circles of the C-suite, a CISO’s ability to dictate a budget and make decisions independently may still depend on where the position falls in the organisational structure. Further, the role of cybersecurity experts has become increasingly important on the board, which has translated to higher salaries and attrition as well. Empowering CISOs might help mitigate this, through increasing representation on the board, direct reporting to the CEO, independent budget allocation and a role in strategy formulation.
The post CISO importance is prompting internal role change appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
#Culture transformation programmes are ten-a-penny in businesses across all industries. That’s no surprise. The pace of #change—technological, economic and competitive—means all large organisations must now think very differently about how they operate and the way their people work.
For #banks, some extra pressures are pushing them in this direction. Tougher post-crisis regulation has introduced multiple layers of complexity and bureaucracy into their businesses. These can get in the way of agility and responsiveness. Personal accountability for decision-making can stifle spontaneity. And traditional hierarchical structures encourage rigidity (and discourage innovation).
All this at a time when disruptive competition from non-traditional sources poses a hugely potent threat. Bank leaders know they must adapt or lose relevance. They have to encourage their people to collaborate better, have greater trust in leadership, make decisions rapidly and, crucially, be more agile and innovative at every level of the enterprise.
Culture change is an agenda we hear all the time in our work with financial services businesses. And in this blog—the first in a short series—we’re introducing what we’ve learned from experience. The bottom line? Culture change is the outcome. Transforming how business is done is essential to make it happen.
Whatever the organisation, the primary objective for culture change is the same: getting back to your ‘prime’. Or put it another way: As businesses mature with age, looking ahead entails looking back. Improved agility and responsiveness hinge on rejuvenation and re-energisation.
We identify five core ‘beliefs’ that are key to making this happen. In this blog, we’ll introduce them. Next time, we’ll examine them—and what they look like in practice—in greater detail.
Firstly, culture change must be insight-driven. As a baseline, businesses need a laser-sharp focus on where they are today, how they’re behaving as an organisation, and how well they’re doing against key measures. That means a data-powered approach is essential. It’s not enough to base culture change programmes on a few engagement surveys or sentiment reviews on Glassdoor. Precision is critical. And that includes understanding how employee behaviours are being reinforced in their day-to-day jobs—and how to change them.
Secondly, successful culture change programmes put people (customers and employees) at the centre. Linked to this is the third key belief: They’re also co-created. That means leaders, colleagues and employees at every level need to be involved in shaping and enabling change. It’s the only way to build and sustain trust in the organisation.
The fourth belief: Recognise how tiny changes can make a massive difference to performance. It’s all about understanding the cumulative effect these changes will have. That means experimentation. Hypothesise, prototype, proof of concept, scale. Repeat.
Lastly, embed change everywhere. That means leaders must be demonstrably committed, living out the change and embodying it in everything they do. It’s through their example that others will be encouraged to shift their behaviour.
Next time, we’ll take a closer look at these beliefs. Meanwhile, thanks for reading.
The post Really want to change your bank’s culture? Change with the business. appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
I’ve been a big Doctor Who fan since I first cowered behind my parents’ sofa in Scotland in the early 1970s, hiding from the Daleks. From the original black and white 1960s series to the recent news that, for the first time, the 13th Doctor will be a woman, the sci-fi series has continually reinvented itself to remain relevant to new audiences. One secret to its success has been the Doctor’s ability to regenerate into a completely new character every 2 to 3 years. Originally an elegant solution to the failing health of the first actor to play the role, regular regeneration has ensured that the writers have had the flexibility to take the show in different directions.
Read the report
If only it were that easy for #banks to reinvent themselves! Instead of a flash of light and a miraculous rebirth, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that to win in the digital economy, banks not only need to have the right business strategy, they also need to #master the discipline of continuously reinventing themselves. Instead of the #change being a Doctor Who-like episodic and disruptive process, the ability to change and adapt needs to be part of the core DNA of the #bank.
In Accenture’s recent 2017 Banking Change Survey, we asked more than 300 executives about their change priorities, how they embed change in their organisations, and the outcomes they are achieving. The study showed that those who have focused on change as a core capability—our ‘change leaders’—are seeing better results across a range of areas from cost control to customer service. The only category in which change leaders were not advantaged was product and service innovation, where it seems that too much change discipline may hinder spontaneity and creativity to some extent.
The leaders don’t treat change management as an ‘add on’ to other programs like network transformation or IT re-platforming. Instead, they view change management as a distinct discipline that not only ensures that they do the things they need to do, but also have the capacity to execute business strategies that will truly differentiate them. Cristoforo Avagliano, an executive at BNP Paribas, summed it up this way: “You have mandatory change because of regulation, you have change because of what competitors are doing, and then you have another kind of change: to catch the latest trends and what the customer is asking of you, but also what the customer has not asked for, but which you imagine. This is the change that can deliver the greatest economic benefit.”
More broadly, change leaders tell us that they have gotten comfortable with the need for rapid, non-stop transformation. While M&A or other disruptive events can occasionally create an opportunity for a Doctor Who-style radical regeneration, the reality for most banks is that superior performance requires them to master the less glamorous, but demonstrably vital process of continuous improvement.
To learn more, read our full 2017 Banking Change Survey.
The post Discover how your bank can become a change master appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
#Change is coming–financial services firms are making sure of it. The majority of FIs will be #accelerating investments #into ‘change,’ according to a survey released last week by Accenture. The top two areas FIs will be targeting are cost control/efficiency, better customer service, and of course, new #digital technologies. About 40% of FIs are currently […]
Bank Innovation
The majority of #insurance professionals #believe that artificial intelligence will completely transform insurance by #2020. According to the “#Technology for the People” report released this week by Accenture, 75% of professionals surveyed (the report polled more than 500 insurance executives across the globe) believe that AI will have a significant impact on insurance. While the technology […]
Bank Innovation
It’s almost time to wave goodbye to 2016. This was a big year for #fintech, with new regulations, new startups, and new technologies displayed across events like Sibos and Money20/20, making it clear that the progress of fintech can’t really be stopped. But how will it continue? That’s the realRead More
Bank Innovation
Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher of the 5th century BC, is quoted as saying “#Change is the only constant in life.” His doctrine was around change being central in the universe. This has also been translated to “the only constant is change.” And this exactly why #Regtech, the cross-sector #Fintech category, #thrives and will continueRead More
Bank Innovation
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