Of course, there are many strategic initiatives that a financial firm can undertake in order to improve performance. In the current market, here are 10 of the most important:
Review your business model and make changes as needed
A company’s business model is its plan for earning a profit. It specifies the goods or services that the firm intends to sell, as well as the market that it has targeted.
Business models are crucial for both new and established firms. They aid in the recruitment of talent and management as well as employee motivation for new, developing businesses.
More specifically in the current context, established businesses in the financial world, on the other hand, must keep their business plans up to date on a regular basis or they will be unable to anticipate trends and difficulties ahead.
Evaluate your competitive landscape and make changes accordingly
A competitive landscape analysis is a method to learn about your competition. It’s a thorough study of the way they do things, from marketing and sales to product development and community building.
Doing so enables you to detect flaws, figure out where you can improve what they’re doing, and create counter-strategies rather than relying on guesswork.
All in all, a competitive landscape analysis is an excellent method to develop a more effective sales and marketing plan by looking out at the world around you and taking notice.
If you want to take advantage of possibilities, learn from others in your field, and stay up on what’s going on in your industry. To get the best out of the process, it is a good idea to conduct a competitive landscape analysis on a regular basis.
Focus on key areas of growth potential
It may be simple to just go with the flow after you’ve gotten so far into your day-to-day operations and particularly when things are going well.
When everything appears to be alright, most finance businesses believe that things are fine, when in fact, if you look further into your statistics, you’ll see a disparity.
In general, the most important products and services for financial institutions are responsible for the majority of the growth. As a result, keep an eye on your data and take appropriate measures to improve your areas of greatest potential.
Then you may experiment with new products and services, attempting to make them more successful. However, the majority of your triumphs will come from the top 10-20% of high return projects.
Develop a strong brand identity
The colour, design, and logo of a brand are the visible elements that identify and distinguish the brand in people’s minds.
The logo and mascot are the centrepiece of any brand. It is how a firm conveys and describes itself through its marketing materials, the company’s colours, and how it promotes itself on social media.
A strong brand image increases a firm’s popularity and presence in a competitive market such as finance.
In addition to saving money on advertising, a well-known brand may be one of the firm’s most valuable assets.
In its most basic form, developing a brand identity requires the following processes:
- Market analysis
- Determining key goals
- Identifying customer personas
- Determining the message you want to convey
Increase customer loyalty and satisfaction
The truth is that the drivers of customer satisfaction and loyalty are simple to find: a service-driven experience with top customer care.
Despite the fact that there has been a lot of investment, effort, and many improvements in recent years, traditional Financial Service companies continue to struggle to provide just that: a great end-to-end brand experience that focuses on client requirements, service and tools that are readily available and even easier to use.
Customers are rarely interested in switching. However, they expect legacy providers to keep up with what they’re seeing from fintechs such as Monzo, Revolut, or Transferwise. Customers care nothing about your infrastructure’s complexity or regulatory hurdles.
Customers are becoming increasingly demanding in terms of what they expect as a standard, and money transfers (including real-time foreign rates), the ability to analyse expenses, setting financial objectives or automated savings, and sending cheques via their mobile app are only a few of the services that have become more popular.
Improve operational efficiency
The epidemic revealed the glaring faults in finance teams’ operational efficiency, as they worked remotely. They were exposed to a loss of productivity because of their lack of resilience, agility, and adaptability. Only businesses that had the foresight to use automated technologies to automate procedures and digitally change were able to resist the effects of forced remote work.
The impact of the epidemic has become permanent, and financial institutions must be ready.
Enhance risk management practices
Boilerplate application of transformation levers, such as spans and layers, is not appropriate for complex risk management.
When risk-function efficiency is attempted to be improved, it will invite more attention. Risk management, in particular, protects you against costly mistakes and failures.
The increased use of digital channels and technologies, greater reliance on third parties, the cloud’s spread, proliferating cyberattacks, and increasing reputational risks posed by social media characterise today’s climate. Making incorrect risk management attempts might cost a company far more than they save.
The true potential of an organisation’s transformation comes from applying these improvements in a step-by-step manner, beginning with the most important area: organisation, governance, procedures, and digitisation and advanced analytics are all essential components that affect both effectiveness and efficiency.
Manage costs effectively
Instead of making quick money by cutting costs, financial firms need to embrace strategic cost management, which is the use of methods that improve a company’s competitive position while simultaneously reducing expenditure.
In particular, strategic cost management is concerned with improving a company’s long-term competitive position without sacrificing short-term profitability.
To build a solid connection between strategy and strategic cost management, the finance function requires strong, decisive, and inspiring leadership.
Invest in technology to stay ahead of the curve
Financial services organisations have been identifying and differentiating themselves not only by the goods and services they provide to clients, but also by the technology that underpins their operations.
These investments are crucial to competing against new entrants, revising business models, and keeping up with changing consumer demands, yet proving the money to management and boards has been historically tough.
It’s critical for businesses to optimise their technology investments in order to get the most out of them.
Promote a culture of innovation
With any new program or change, it’s important to lay the groundwork for its success by establishing a culture that encourages and supports it. Finance is one of the most efficient and procedure-oriented departments in the business world. Given the increasingly complex compliance regulations that must be fulfilled, this caution is understandable.
In the end, in a world that is continuously changing – building a more agile and adaptable way of working, as well as fostering an innovation culture, are important to success.
