Need of a clear definition of priorities and timing
As already mentioned, an effective delegation by the head-office to the profit centres is a crucial condition of success. In order to send clear messages, priorities have to be precisely defined, with timing for each of them.
A managerial choice
Each bank has its own culture and organisational choice. Depending on these elements, the head-office gives more or less autonomy to its profit centres, either branches or product lines. In terms of efficiency and dynamism, it is however usually better to give the profit centres the direct responsibility of their activity, and to [...]
Not a single standardised target
Depending on their positions and functions, the people responsible of a bank’s management, either at the head-office or at a branch level, have different objectives. They have various needs of monitoring and request customised tools to exert this monitoring.
Necessity of a comprehensive and logical framework
To be efficient, the implementation of a new strategy has to be done in a framework detailing all the aspects of the monitoring. This framework is defined by the head-office, which then has to ensure that it is correctly used by the branches and the support functions.
Importance of the issue
The issue raised is that is not linked to the physical safety, for instance of a building. The purpose is to address the question of the financial safety of the operations managed by the branch network.
General understanding
Customer satisfaction, as such, should be part of an efficient branch management, and it ha to be measured and monitored. The question then is to find how to do it. There are several available tools.
General understanding
The banking activity, especially at branch level, can be considered as an industrial process in the same way as for any type of economic activity.
It should be clear from all of our discussions so far, that exact assessment of risk is impossible. The future holds many surprises!
To counteract our inability to predict the exact risk with any one particular credit facility, banks try to keep overall risk within acceptable limits by several means, such as those highlighted on next.
Diversification versus specialisation
For all-purpose banking, as we know it in Continental Europe, further diversification will involve the development of all round financial business with the addition of insurance and savings accounts, leasing, factoring, electronic banking products and management consulting.
Explain to the group that it is important to translate these reports by recommendations and to imagine orientations respecting the strategy of our bank.
