While BancorpSouth still uses television to build its brand, Burchfield says he has moved virtually all of the remainder of the bank’s marketing efforts from traditional print media to Internet channels such as banner ads and micro-sites within other popular sites, which also offer banks the ability to track their marketing returns more accurately. ➤Lack of historical data and high customer acquisition costs puts fintechs at a disadvantage in comparison to banks and technology companies. Even as they shy away from major core system replacements and other massive overhauls, savings can be found in the simplification or selective replacement of back office technology. Deep Digitization in Utilities Operations. A formal feedback mechanism was also installed. Redesigning the operating model for support functions and reducing the number of employees is expected to cut costs by about 15% (or 3% of the bank’s total costs). Think about that: Half of the applications received were not in good order. Bank … The German lender’s latest cost-cutting measure signals the bank is willing to slash just about anything to save a few dollars. Refining and consolidating back office systems. And they wanted to improve the overall customer experience in the process. And they wanted to improve the overall customer experience in the process. Reviewing vendor contracts. Employee operating costs were cut by 16 percent. Ms. Hoffman is a freelance writer based in Lawton, Okla. BAI © 2020 All rights reserved. By Simon Gompertz Personal finance correspondent, BBC News The entire project broke even in just six months. Published November 9, 2020 Updated November 9, 2020 . Reuters . NEW YORK. The results of this lean effort, implemented in concert with the bank’s management team and internal change-management organization, are incredible. Up to 2,200 job cuts likely at Bank of Ireland under cost-cutting plan Broker says bank likely to cut headcount by up to 20% Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 10:27 Updated: Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 18:12. Using standardization, the productivity variance of “in good order” applications plummeted to less than 15 percent. Instead, banks are being careful about worker hiring, training and deployment. “Business as usual” within this bank included multiple back-office support functions which created positions dedicated solely to rework. ... PwC has identified a bank of over 100 Cost Reduction Initiatives and Techniques. BAI is Bank Administration Institute and BAI Center, Cost-Cutting Tips for Revenue-Squeezed Bankers. You might want to learn more about The Lab’s unique self-funding engagement model and money-back guarantee. Proven industry-leading practices were required to standardize NIGO fixes, streamline the workflow, and slash variance among teams. Banks are facing increasing pressure to cut costs as profits have slumped over the course of 2020. Five areas were addressed: The initial analysis shone a spotlight on a glaring weakness for the bank: The rate of not-in-good-order, or NIGO, inbound applications averaged 50 percent. Consider: Productivity shot up 30 percent. A few months on and cracks are beginning to show. They wanted to cut operational costs and improve efficiency and effectiveness in their back-office support groups. Davidson. HSBC, Goldman Sachs and UBS are all promising new strategies for the new decade. With nearly 1,500 branches, 24,000 employees, and $175 billion in assets, they sought to cut costs and improve the efficiency of their retail branch network. Cost cutting is a matter of commitment from the top management. Remember: a million clients across 17 countries. “We may renegotiate to add more years in order to push for a better price,” says Michael Lindsey, senior vice president for BancorpSouth of Tupelo, Miss. With increasing airfare and hotel costs, banks are “hunkering down and taking a closer look at travel expenses,” says Jim Neckopulos, Dallas-based senior vice president and leader of the financial practice at Hitachi Consulting. The French bank said the jobs would go as it looks to strip out around €450m within its capital markets unit by 2023. This cuts Information Technology as well as support costs, he says. Much of the cost-cutting burden is falling on the bank’s staff. In the wake of coronavirus lockdowns, the world’s largest investment banks presented a united front in refusing to cut jobs. Bank cost cutting: The final tally. The cost-cutting and efficiency agenda will vary among regions and from bank to bank. These were compounded by: These problems made themselves known in numerous KPIs, including processing cycle time, error rates, and backlog volumes. While other banks are pushing the pause button on pre-Covid job cuts and digital transformation projects, Deutsche Bank is pressing ahead with plans laid down in 2019…and seizing the opportunity to make further costs savings from home working and video-conferencing. Implementing these initiatives is expected to improve efficiency in the respective units by about 25% and reduce the bank’s total costs by 4%. So was the backlog. Not surprisingly, the rate for this KPI (key performance indicator) was significantly higher than that of the bank’s competitors. Multiple retail branch forms and templates were standardized. Bob Meara, senior analyst for Boston’s Celent, part of the Oliver Wyman Group, says that more banks are using teller management software to help them staff their branches more effectively, based on when customers are most likely to come in and what they need at various times. Randy Burchfield, who manages marketing for BancorpSouth, says that he uses video-conferencing every week for his regular meetings with the bank’s lead ad agency, which is based a five-hour drive away in Little Rock, Ark. Earlier this month, Deutsche Bank circulated a memo noting that free fresh fruit will no longer be provided to employees, according to the FT. Bankers will now need to dip into their own wallet to stave off scurvy, it appears. “I haven’t traveled to Little Rock in two months,” he says. Deutsche Bank counts cost of job cutting with £2.8bn loss. The London-based bank, which is planning to cut 35,000 jobs to trim costs, is seeking to double the number of mobile users by 2022, which could generate more revenue per customer. Over the course of two months, more than 125 individual-improvement and cost-cutting opportunities were identified. One way to avoid out-of-town travel is to utilize video- or audio-conferencing. It’s another shocker that’s all too common in banking, and invites cost reduction. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co. and Bank of America Corp. in Charlotte both announced major cost-cutting initiatives this past spring (in March and April respectively) and others have followed in recent weeks. ➤Incorporating nonfinancial services is a way for fintechs to counterattack big techs' foray into finance. ABN Amro Bank NV plans to cut about 2,800 jobs over four years as the Dutch lender retreats from large parts of its investment bank and digitization allows it to operate with a smaller staff. For help in making these important decisions, here's some insight into potential areas for cost cutting and ideas on how to think about each reduction. Cost cutting measures are typically implemented during times of financial distress for a company or during economic downturns. BancorpSouth has also reduced the number of its in-branch marketing materials, from more than 25 to about half a dozen. While layoffs are typically seen as the most direct way to reduce this cost and some banks such as BofA have announced branch-closure plans, most institutions try to avoid this if possible due to the risk of alienating customers. Rather than looking to massive across-the-board cuts to boost returns, most financial companies are seeking to trim expenses selectively with an eye to keeping employees content, customers well-served and avoiding harm to client retention and sales growth. “The racks in our branches used to look like those racks at a beach or mountain vacation spot, with all these brochures stuffed in there,” Lindsey says. The German lender says it had already given notice to or "eliminated" 900 employees as part of a shake-up announced two weeks ago. “Banks will focus on what they can control — as opposed to taking any undue risks as they work through all this,” said Kevin Fitzsimmons, an analyst at D.A. New tools and techniques were required to report on productivity, quality, service, and cost data. Cutting to spend on technology has been a thing for several years, but 2020 looks like the year it gets real lift. BancorpSouth, for example, has “virtualized” many of its servers, Lindsey says, meaning that instead of using dedicated hardware, the company deploys generic shared hardware to more efficiently run specific areas of its operations. Cost cutting: A strength 1 Transform the way you cut costs The economic slow down is impacting the CEE region, prompting businesses to address a set of new challenges. Moving to less expensive marketing channels. In this one, we’re going to dive into a cost-cutting case study with big results—and great takeaways for you. The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce plans to lay off an undetermined number of staff in an effort to cut costs and become a “more efficient bank,” according to a … This addressed the conflicting information they had previously created for employees and customers alike. Here are some common tactics that banks, large and small, are utilizing in their efforts to improve operating efficiency: BancorpSouth has just begun to test virtualization at the desktop for its retail staff, which Lindsey hopes will not only reduce hardware and support costs, but also extend the life of the systems. Goldman Sachs CFO confident bank can hit cost-cutting targets. Tomasofsky says that banks are asking for better terms and pricing on these contracts “even if they’re not up for renewal.” One tactic is to offer to extend the contract terms in order to sweeten the deal for the vendor. This was linked directly to the bank’s management team. Eliminating unnecessary document printing and electricity usage can save even a smaller bank thousands of dollars annually and can also help boost the bank’s reputation as environmentally friendly. Many are holding off on filling open positions (sometimes for months) as a way to free up some short-term expenditures without impacting morale, according to Paul Tomasofsky, president of Two Sparrows Consulting of Montvale, N.J. While some banks have slashed their existing marketing budgets across the board, others are looking to re-engineer their marketing with an eye toward lower-cost, electronic channels such as online, email and SMS. HSBC bank will shift its physical services into the digital sphere in a push to get more customers to migrate to mobile as part of cost-cutting program. Since taking over as CEO in 2010, Moynihan has cut Bank of America's non-interest costs by $28 billion to just under $55 billion. Copyright © Lab Consulting Partnership, 2021 | All rights reserved, Cut Banking Costs Now: Achieve “The New Normal” for Productivity “Big Rock” 1 of 3: The retail branch network, The Lab’s unique self-funding engagement model and money-back guarantee, Automate Paycheck Protection Program Loans, Lean Six Sigma Projects for Finance and Accounting, Robotic Process Automation in Credit Unions, Robotic Process Automation in Finance and Accounting, Robotic Process Automation in Financial Services, Robotic Process Automation in Health Insurance, Robotic Process Automation in Investment and Asset Management, Robotic Process Automation Insurance Claims, what are retail banks doing to control costs and improve efficiency. Blood-thirsty bank analysts are excitedly burnishing the sharp edges of their cost-cutting calculations. With so much of their money flowing out to vendors, it’s not surprising that many banks are looking to review or renegotiate outsourcing contracts. Wells Fargo, as part of its Project Compass initiative, is consolidating disparate systems onto a single platform, such as with its customer information database, according to Scott Dillon, head of the bank’s technology infrastructure services. In view of the depression in oil market, costs have been cut by most E&P companies and related services providers to levels no one would have imagined before. Ulster Bank had announced plans back in February to cut its costs, including a redundancy scheme for 100 managers as part of an earlier £250m group wide cost-cutting plan. Societe Generale is cutting 640 jobs within its investment bank in France as part of a broader plan to restructure its equity derivatives unit after a period of poor performance. Individual performance reporting was inconsistent. They can also be enacted if … After the initial analysis and design phase of the assignment was complete, the implementation phase began. Six months after that, its ROI was pegged at a factor of 4.5. Processing cycle time dropped by a third. Cost-cutting makes sense, industry observers said. This bank’s Caribbean operations presented a tremendous improvement opportunity. They were being processed in an ad-hoc fashion, with a variance in productivity routinely exceeding 70 percent. Handsomely. Bank of America recently suffered from rumors about soup, crackers, and hand soap no longer being supplied to employees. Tellers will print out 8.5×11 sheets with current product listings and rates at a customer’s request, so they are assured the information is up-to-date and there’s no waste of paper, he adds. This is an absolutely true case study from the files of The Lab Consulting. It’s just one of countless others we’ve delivered for clients for more than 25 years. For this initiative, retail branch support functions were analyzed for more than 500 employees across four different cities. In some cases, a paperless initiative in the back office can lead to reducing the use of paper through delivery channels as well, Meara says. Error rates dropped by an amazing 35 percent. Impressively, nearly 90 percent of these improvements required no new technology investment. Fifth Third Bancorp is slashing costs, with plans to remove $200 million in expenses by early next year, including its recent decision to shed some jobs. Replacing (some) employee travel with video conferencing. As the credit crisis gripped financial services a couple of years ago, cutting costs was the call to action at banks worldwide, and especially in the U.S. That meant a relentless pursuit of greater efficiency and a deeper understanding of where are the excess expenses and processes in … Deutsche Bank has expanded its cost-cutting plans with its CFO saying a previous target of bringing expenses down to €21bn by 2021 was not ambitious enough.. Perhaps the story of your bank, tactfully disguised as this one was, might end up in these blogs, too. Deutsche Bank is gearing up to cut hundreds of jobs in its equities trading and research, as well as derivatives trading, as part of a cost-cutting drive, according to the Wall Street Journal. Here are some common tactics that banks, large and small, are utilizing in their efforts to improve operating efficiency: Realigning branch staff. Reducing internal use of paper and electricity. Faced with a slow-growth economy and shrinking revenues, bank managers are pulling the only lever they have left: expense control. Services. In this bank, operating metrics were not consistently collected, employed, or understood. But those NIGO applications were still a problem. Excessive customer touch points to gather follow-up information. This, in turn, helped them to focus their efforts on workforce performance and cost reduction in banking overall. While RBS is priming its people for what the Financial Times describes as, ' a fresh strategy and cost-cutting plan in the new year,' other banks are doing the same and jettisoning ballast as they go. “Banks have to be cautious about unnecessarily making radical changes; they need to be able to remain agile and fluid,” says David Albertazzi, senior analyst for Boston-based Aite Group. UMB Bank of Kansas City, Mo., for example, expects to reduce its branch staffing expenses by $1.9 million over three years by utilizing such a system to coordinate branch staffing, planning and forecasting, according to Meara. In addition, some banks are opting to hire part-time employees instead of full-time in order to gain more flexibility in staffing models and to save on employee benefit costs. This website uses cookies and third party services. For institutions most affected by the crisis, particularly those in North America and the United Kingdom, tactical cost reductions are the immediate priority. … Although formal numbers have yet to be announced, the German lender may eliminate as many as 15,000 to 20,000 jobs, joining a growing list of global banks that have announced multiple jobs reduction rounds this year. “In other scenarios, we may consolidate on fewer systems to increase efficiency and consistency,” Dillon adds. ➤Sharp cost-cutting by Brazilian banks could drive price-based fintech models out of business. They’re all the more impressive when you realize that no new technology was required: Best of all, this project broke even in just six months. Whether true or not, Bank of America has already received heat and bad publicity for trying to apply cost cutting measures that ultimately would have minimal impact on … Dubai’s Mashreq Bank may move jobs to Pakistan as part of cost-cutting move The report added that Mashreq Bank will also cut a large number of … It was a tall order. He points out that Extraco Banks, a Waco, Tex.-based community bank, was able to save $8,000 in paper costs last year, due to multiple initiatives such as imaging deposits at the teller line. Employee compensation accounts for about 44% of U.S. banks’ operating cost, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. And the work paid off. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co. and Bank of America Corp. in Charlotte both announced major cost-cutting initiatives this past spring (in March and April respectively) and others have followed in recent weeks. Our previous article discussed ways to increase operational efficiency in the banking sector. This prevented a focus on a lean, customer-centric experience while applications were being processed. On the other hand, many banks in the Asia-Pacific region are pursuing a broader efficiency agenda focused But investors rewarded the bank for announcing the new cost-cutting target and sent the stock up 3.3% to $14.11. Bank cost-cutting threatens free cash machines. 1. They wanted to cut operational costs and improve efficiency and effectiveness in their back-office support groups. With nearly 1,500 branches, 24,000 employees, and $175 billion in assets, they sought to cut costs and improve the efficiency of their retail branch network. Thus management was poorly equipped to implement uniform routines across operational areas. This story took place at one of the largest consumer banks in the United States. Error rates were cut in half. The reasons to do it are obvious: large-scale cost cutting to compensate for the dim earnings outlook, thanks to the pandemic-induced combination of rising loan losses, weak borrowing and collapsing net interest margin. These provide clients with a number Since opening its doors in 1993, The Lab has helped some of the best companies in the world become even better. Inside Wells Fargo's Plan to Cut $10 Billion in Expenses The bank will try to complete its ambitious plan while also trying to balance other initiatives. Employee compensation accounts for about 44% of U.S. banks’ operating cost, Extraco Banks, a Waco, Tex.-based community bank, was able to save $8,000 in paper costs last year. He estimates that these efforts will reduce existing costs by between 10% and 15% per year. Numerous non-technology improvements were implemented to fix this problem. Ineffective processes permeated the bank’s back-office operations. 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