Despite strong recent performance, global banking continues to face deep structural challenges.
Our Approach to Wholesale Banking Business Challenges
Our solutions address fundamental elements of the corporate banking reinvention journey:
- Data and Analytics: We accelerate and capture profit potential by using advanced data and analytics in a proven change management approach to grow profit by approximately 15% to 20%.
- Radical Cost Reduction: We identify the most relevant cost vectors, as well as those with the most impact, to go beyond tightening the belt to achieve a radical cost reduction of 20% to 30%.
- Balance Sheet Optimization: We help clients develop a new dynamic capability to integrate stress testing with balance sheet optimization, to support financial resilience and create a fortress balance sheet.
- Sustainable Finance: We work with wholesale banks to define and implement their decarbonization ambitions, helping them drive sustainable finance impact through operating-model redesign, risk management, and solutions for their clients and their products.
- Digital Transformation: Digital transformation is imperative to prepare wholesale banking for the future. We help clients identify the most effective levers of a digital transformation to drive significant profitability and guarantee relevance in the post digital age.
- Large Regulatory Tech Programs: Many wholesale banks have legacy IT architecture systems that are inflexible, hinder time to market, and incur increasing costs. Our specialists help clients choose the best structure with cross-asset functionality to meet their specific needs.
Our Client’s Success in Wholesale Banking
$200m
in three years
Developed a large-scale agile transformation for a global investment bank with an expected impact of $200 million in three years, a three to five times faster delivery to market, a two to three times increase in productivity, and improvement in customer satisfaction and employment engagement.
¥5b
incremental loans
Developed a one-year digital transformation program for a large bank in Asia Pacific that greatly improved its digital and sector solution capability. In the first month of the pilot, more than ten new strategic accounts were opened and ¥5 billion in incremental loans were approved.
$30m
incremental annual revenues
Designed a revenue and risk tool for the sales field based on predictive machine learning models for a US commercial bank, providing more than 350 frontline staff with full transparency into their client books and equipping them with personalized recommendations for their clients. As a result, the bank expects to gain $30 million in incremental annual revenues, identify customers at risk of attrition 6 months in advance, and identify customers at risk of distress 12 months in advance.
Our Insights on Wholesale Banking
Report
May 27, 2025
Article
October 21, 2024
Tectonic shifts are reshaping the industry, as value migrates from traditional corporate and investment banks to nonbank financial institutions. But taking action on five priorities can position CIBs for long-term competitive advantage.
Article
July 22, 2024
Despite the volatile interest rate environment, this year’s survey of bank treasury executives shows progress in balance sheet optimization, but operational improvements have stalled.
Article
March 15, 2024
Addressing the crisis in the natural world requires an estimated $1.2 trillion in annual private sector investment. Institutions that act next can gain business advantages.
Meet Our Wholesale Banking Consulting Leaders
BCG’s wholesale banking consulting teams comprise industry practitioners; technology, data, and artificial intelligence specialists; and climate, finance, risk, and regulatory experts. These teams support banking and nonbanking institutions across the wholesale banking ecosystem on a global scale.
