The Point

The Point: Playing the M&A Game—Five Steps to High Performance

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 07:42:00 GMT

Accenture believes that the frenzy of merger and acquisition activity in financial services has not yet peaked. In fact, we expect considerably more transactions over the coming months as stronger companies look to expand market share while weaker players may be "forced" into an M&A transaction. Further, the number of transactions is likely to increase and accelerate if economic conditions worsen. Many financial institutions and banks, in particular, are not well positioned for growth in a credit-constrained marketplace with an overleveraged customer base.

The Point: How Performance Analytics Can Change the Game in Banking

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 07:25:00 GMT

Chief financial officers of financial services companies face a broader range of demands as their roles evolve from passive scorekeepers to active strategic partners in enterprise management. Often, the CFO is responsible for identifying performance and value drivers and sharing them across the organization. Cost reduction and process improvement are also in the CFO’s domain.

The Point: How Culture and Technology are Speeding the Need for Life Insurance Transformation

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 03:38:00 GMT

In the past 20 years, the life insurance industry has had its share of disruptive events: major booms and busts in stocks and real estate, continuing industry consolidation, the emergence of independent distribution and a dramatic evolution in the product mix, to name a few. As the economy increasingly becomes characterized by multiple centers of economic power—which Accenture calls the multi-polar world—one can expect to see more disruption in the future.

The Point: The Path to Success in Application Outsourcing

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 04:02:00 GMT

Until recently, financial institutions outsourced for one reason: labor arbitrage. As one of the biggest line items in the information technology budget, application development and maintenance has been a central focus for outsourcing.

The Point: Riding the Next Wave

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:16:56 GMT

The amount of accumulated global wealth is rising rapidly. This is especially true in emerging markets as a result of the rise of the multi-polar world—a world in which economic might emanates from multiple points around the globe, not just from traditional centers of power. As a result, the wealth-management industry is one of the fastest-growing segments of financial services.

Taking the Plunge

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:17:00 GMT

Migrating to .NET for high performance Visual Basic 6 (VB6) is the most widely used language for production systems, but Microsoft has discontinued support for it, leaving developers no alternative but to migrate. The question for financial institutions is not whether to migrate, but how, when and at what cost. The successor to Visual Basic 6, Visual Basic.NET, has already penetrated more than a third of the software development market. Financial services companies that implement .NET can achieve cost savings of as much as 50 percent on top of productivity improvements, downtime reductions and gains in technological innovation. Companies that are complacent in this regard may well find themselves at a competitive disadvantage.

The Point: Ripple Effects

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 13:47:00 GMT

Winds of Change Achieving high performance in the Japanese insurance marketplace is a challenging goal, given the convergence of forces currently buffeting the market: ongoing deregulation, the imminent extension of Bancassurance (the sale of insurance products by banks) and the planned privatization of Japan Post. Domestic and foreign players alike are in a race to define and capitalize on opportunities for competitive advantage, articulate clear strategies for addressing market changes and position them effectively to deliver optimum performance. The differences between the two are the speed and the path on which they plan to travel.

The Point: Taking IT from the Top

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 14:57:00 GMT

Maximizing Returns on the IT Portfolio The increasing regulatory burden facing financial services companies is one of the major factors driving the industry's investment in information technology. Yet most financial organizations do not manage their investments in IT with the same discipline they apply to their securities portfolios, for example. As a result, they do not always get what they are paying for when investing in IT.

The Point: Final Exam

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 15:12:00 GMT

Passing the Test Competitive pressure in the financial services industry has made technology a critical resource and put a premium on speed to market. As a result, companies are moving quickly to implement new technologies.

The Point: New Name of the Game

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 14:36:00 GMT

Shifting the Focus from Cost to Quality Outsourcing of technology applications and services has been around a long time, especially in the financial services industry. But in many respects, IT outsourcing today bears little resemblance to that of ten or even five years ago.

The Point: Untangling the Web

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 14:38:00 GMT

The CIO Challenge Albert Einstein once said, "Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."

The Point: Finding the New El Dorado

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 03:36:00 GMT

The financial services sector staggered out of 2007 with a significant decrease in net income—more than 25 percent, on average—for many of the biggest global banks. Meanwhile, in the developed world, the industry continues to consolidate.

The Point: Delivering on the Branded Experience

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:04:00 GMT

Where branded experiences breed success For any business, growth means either attracting new customers or engendering a level of loyalty that makes existing customers buy more—ideally both. But in financial services, growth is being squeezed by many factors, including product commoditization, increasing competition, changing demographics and rising consumerism. All of these threaten to erode the ability of financial institutions to attract, retain and grow enough customers to meet investors’ demands for a return on their investments.

The Point: On the Madness of Crowds

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:32:00 GMT

A new approach to information management Many questions have arisen from the subprime market crisis, but one thing seems beyond doubt: information mismanagement was a key contributor. From mortgage origination through securitization and investment, assumptions, models and analysis had many opportunities to go wrong. And go wrong they clearly did. Where bubbles and crashes occur, failures of information management can be found nearby. However, to survive the ensuing credit-driven phase of the underwriting cycle, banks must learn from past mistakes and optimize their lending practices.

The Point: Orchestral Maneuvers

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 16:57:00 GMT

Finding and Connecting the Missing Link In the increasingly complex area of finance, risk and regulatory management for global banking, Accenture research and client work has established that high-performance banks recognize the importance of linking enterprise performance management (EPM) with enterprise risk management (ERM) to ensure the successful execution of their overall business strategy.

Rethinking Claims

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:13:46 GMT

When a policyholder files a claim, he expects a prompt, efficient and fair settlement. If that happens, the insurance company gains a satisfied, loyal customer; if not, the insurer may lose that customer. With so much at stake, why then is the claims process at so many insurance companies broken?

The Point: Navigating toward High Performance in Turbulent Markets

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:26:00 GMT

A slowing economy, volatile financial markets, softening premium rates, emerging markets and fast-changing customer demands are redefining the insurance industry. To gain insight into how insurance companies can achieve high performance in such a turbulent marketplace, Accenture commissioned Institutional Investor Market Research Group to conduct a global survey of more than 100 leading property and casualty (P&C) and life insurance equity analysts in 14 of the world’s largest insurance markets.

The Point: Automation for the People

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 14:35:00 GMT

When manufacturing companies seek greater economies of scale across product lines while retaining each product's distinctive brand traits and characteristics, they "industrialize" their operations: deconstructing the product and the manufacturing processes into smaller, more discrete components that can be efficiently combined in various combinations depending on what is being built. The automotive industry is a perfect example. With their "platform" approach to building cars, companies such as Volkswagen and Toyota can combine different parts in different ways to spread engineering and production costs across a greater number of vehicles while ensuring that, for example, a Volkswagen Passat remains different from an Audi A4—even though they share many components and are built on the same assembly line.

The Point: Prime Opportunities

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:29:30 GMT

Lending institutions, especially in the United States, are feeling the strain. In the wake of the weak housing market, subprime mortgage crisis and ensuing credit crunch, they are struggling with how to increase revenue in a market, if not an economy, that is retrenching. Net interest margins are at their lowest levels since 1991.