Wednesday 14th Nov, 2018
By Julie Ahadi.
“Overall, a customer-centric focus is the biggest change in the financial services market in recent years” …said a consultant we spoke to for our 2018 financial services sector market report. And we don’t disagree with her: In fact, the general realisation that putting customers first is key to winning—and staying in—business is spreading like cross-sector wildfire.
With the likes of Amazon, Facebook, and Google leading the charge in delivering A-grade customer experience, the general population has, in a very short space of time, come to expect this level of service as standard. Technology players in other sectors—such as retail—are adopting cutting-edge approaches to improve the customer experience, and this is forcing financial services players to up their game considerably. And there are no exceptions to this rule: Got a huge, immovable legacy system that makes changing existing IT architecture and implementing new systems painful, slow, and expensive? Too bad. Lack the agility to make far-reaching changes in your culture or operations? Boo-hoo. Customers’ insatiable appetite for a simple and immediate banking experience isn’t about to go away anytime… well, ever.
Thursday 30th Nov, 2017
By Zoë Stumpf.
It’s hard to overestimate the importance of financial services consulting to the global consulting market. By the end of 2016, it was worth over $36bn, having grown by more than 8% over the previous year and representing almost 30% of the world’s consulting revenues.
It’s just as well then that this sizeable market keeps on driving large volumes of consulting work. Granted, we did see one major market experience a drop in financial services consulting revenue last year, but given that it was the deeply troubled Russian market, we wouldn’t suggest reading too much into that.
Tuesday 20th Jun, 2017
By Zoë Stumpf.
Having just emerged—slowly—from the depths of the financial crisis, Brexit was arguably the last thing that the UK financial services industry needed. Eight years of dealing with onerous regulatory requirements and severe cost cutting–as well as the disruptive influence of digital and aggressive inroads by challenger banks–have taken their toll on the industry and left it in no need of this new challenge.
Monday 1st Aug, 2016
By Alison Huntington.
A few years ago, it was all so straightforward. Strategy firms did strategy work. IT firms did technology. The Big Four did finance-y stuff. End of.
These days, the consulting landscape is far more porous, with firms’ expertise blurring across consulting lines. For clients, the clear demarcation of who to go to for what is no more, and for consulting firms, stakeholder engagement maps have become a lot more complex.
Thursday 27th Aug, 2015
By Alison Huntington What’s the difference between TMT and financial services clients? There are the obvious things: the jeans and lumberjack shirts versus the sharp suits; the seemingly impenetrable language of technology versus the dictionary of complex financial products; sunshine-soaked Silicon Valley versus the imposing skyscrapers of New York. But there are less obvious things, and the one we uncovered is that clients in these two sectors have very different opinions of the value added by consultants.
Thursday 5th Feb, 2015
Annual publications are an entrenched feature of the financial services thought leadership landscape. Most consulting firms have one, if not many, annual reports targeting the sector.
Monday 8th Dec, 2014
By Alison Huntington It seems a month barely passes without a new financial services scandal making headlines across the globe. Whether it’s bankers in London quaffing Bollinger after a day of rate rigging, international banks laundering money for cartels and unpleasant regimes, or technical glitches which mean customers can’t access their money, examples of bad behaviour and failed processes just keep crawling out of the woodwork, with no obvious changes made to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Monday 7th Oct, 2013
By Source Senior Analyst, B.J. Richards
Monday 16th Sep, 2013
The Big Four firms’ consulting practices have always been closely intertwined with the fortunes of the financial services industry.
Monday 1st Feb, 2010
If we look for a moment at the UK consulting industry (every country is a bit different), we can divide it into three parts. On one side of the scales is the market in financial services; on the other is that in the public sector. Each of these markets is similar in size: in the middle and a little bigger than both is everything else: telecoms, utilities, manufacturing, media companies, etc.
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