Financial services consulting

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.

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.

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.