validus management consultancy UK

Financial Services Case Study

Estates Management at UK bank


Lack of management attention left staff feeling undervalued
Estates offices now processing additional 37% cases

THE ORGANISATION

  • The Estates Management business within the Wealth Management Division of one of the major UK banks

THE ISSUES / PROBLEMS

  • The Estates business had historically suffered from a lack of management attention and investment, staff consequently felt 'undervalued' by the rest of the Wealth Management division
  • The Estates business was highly profitable and there was an opportunity to grow substantially
  • Need to identify and release a minimum of 20% capacity from within existing resources to support the first phase of business growth
  • Need to introduce capacity management, resource planning and performance management to support ongoing growth (double the business within 2 years)
  • Business processes were not consistent across the four Estates offices
  • Significant 'skills-gap' with senior experienced Estates staff due for retirement

PROJECT ACTIVITIES

  • Carried out a series of introductory 'scoping' workshops with selected members of staff across all four Estates offices
  • Established project structure and improvement opportunity
  • Carried out a series of highly detailed process reviews and comparisons covering all Estates processes, across all locations, identified key process differences and critique of weaknesses
  • Immediate attention to high operational risk issues that had to date gone undetected
  • Formed a team including representatives from all locations to re-engineer an agreed set of more effective and efficient processes
  • Reviewed all proposed process changes with Group Risk and Compliance departments for agreement and sign-off
  • Active engagement of Group IT department to generate further systems based process enhancements (represents 7% additional capacity)
  • Implemented new processes across all locations
  • Developed and implemented a workload and capacity planning model to enable both 'what-if' scenario planning, also to manage performance on a regular structured basis
  • Carried out a series of Performance Management workshops to establish a genuine performance focused culture
  • Carried out skills audit across all offices and used as basis for structured training programmes, including the 'fast-tracking' of appropriate staff to address the 'skills-timebomb'
  • Carried out a series of culture change workshops to address the prevailing negative attitudes within the Estates offices and position the mind-sets for growth.

PROJECT RESULTS

  • Estates offices now processing additional 37% cases
  • Established improved working relationships both within and between Estates offices, promoting a 'one-business' culture
  • Vastly simplified and common processes implemented across all offices
  • Business positioned to exploit the growth potential