tailieunhanh - A Strategic Approach to Cost Reduction in Banking - Achieving High Performance in Uncertain Times

The main difference between stock and mutual companies rests with who controls the bank and receives its profits (Rasmusen 1988). A stock company is owned by its stockholders, who control (at least in theory) the managers, decide how to distribute profits, and are free to sell their stocks at any time. On the contrary, a mutual association is “owned” by its members who are also its depositors, but it is hardly controlled by them. Instead, in this case, managers are self&referential and thus unlikely minimizing the cost of banking services (Rasmusen 1988). The mutual bank could well be seen as a self&enforcing contract in which the managers provide low&risk banking services to rational but ill&informed savers who are risk&averse and unprotected by deposit insurance. Depositors who are unable or unwilling to monitor bank’s portfolio prefer mutual banks because managers there have stronger incentives to choose a safe portfolio. . | A Strategic Approach to Cost Reduction in Banking Achieving High Performance in Uncertain Times Contents Rethink Traditional Cost Strategies 2 Strike the Right Balance 3 Avoid Arbitrary Cuts 4 Transform Cost Reduction 5 Industrialize Operations 8 Getting Started 9 Collaborating with Accenture 10 Looking Ahead 12 Senior banking executives face a vexing dilemma. In this difficult economic environment there is great urgency to reduce costs and improve efficiency. But cutting indiscriminately or too deeply may severely hamper the ability to grow revenues when the economic outlook improves. In Accenture s view arbitrary cost reduction based on rationales of sharing the pain equally across the organi-zation is no longer sufficient and risks cutting muscle as well as fat. Instead financial institutions need to take a more strategic approach by viewing cost-cutting as part of a broader efficiency effort. Balancing short-term tactical cost reductions with longer-term strategic cost initiatives will leave banks much better positioned for future high performance. This approach can yield cost reductions up to 20 percent help variabilize a high fixed-cost base and enable banks to weather the credit storm. Just as important this strategy aligns with banks efforts to simplify processes and systems standardize products and facilitate market differentiation. Those attributes are what we consider the blueprint for a high-performance bank. This brochure examines how banks can solve the dilemma by taking out costs in a judicious way that also supports future growth.