Wholesale Banking

As top-line pressures along with cost and capital-optimization concerns continue to weigh on incumbents, these new entrants—including nimble fintechs and native digital giants—have set the tone for customer expectations in terms of speed, simplicity, and ubiquitous availability of service. Their ability to respond quickly to the changing environment and to clients’ needs has created many new opportunities.

BCG's wholesale banking segment advises companies at all levels of this ecosystem—including global universal banks, corporate and investment banks, securities firms, custodians, regional commercial banks, exchanges, and information providers—and has a proven record of innovation and value-creation in helping institutions define priorities and implement new strategies. We have helped companies reinvent their business models, adopt agile ways of working, enhance revenues, reduce costs, create unique customer journeys, design and implement end-to-end transformations, and chart clear paths toward the digital future—among many other initiatives.

Our experience and offerings encompass the entirety of the wholesale banking business, including:

• All client segments, ranging from SMEs to large multinational corporations to institutional clients
• All global regions
• Expertise and insights across business disciplines and functional capabilities including asset finance, sales and trading, security services, corporate coverage and advisory,  trade finance, treasury management, IT and operations, digital technology, data and analytics, risk, and regulatory compliance
• Knowledge across all products ranging from core lending and transaction- banking offerings to the most sophisticated capital markets products
• Deep capabilities in solving key strategic issues and in fine-tuning complex operational and organizational challenges

Examples of our work include:

• Supported the digital acceleration of a top bank in Asia-Pacific by reimagining SME customer journeys, increasing speed to market with a scalable, agile delivery model, and improving customer pricing through data and analytics
• Developed a strategic vision by identifying new and significant business opportunities that exploit digital technologies. The BCG team evaluated existing business competencies and opportunities for the institutional clients of the global bank’s Markets business
• Supported the turnaround of a German wholesale bank, together with BCG TURN, by redesigning its business model and strategy, reducing its cost base by 50%, implementing a new operating model and organizational set-up, designing a new steering model, and restructuring its balance sheet—all of which led to a substantial profit increase
• Defined a pricing strategy for the custody and fund services businesses, across all core products, of a leading global investment bank
• Designed a revenue enhancement program focused on capital markets cross-selling and sales productivity, smart pricing in cash and trade, and monetizing the network to achieve 10% revenue growth — in addition to achieving deep cultural change concerning overall discipline, collaboration, and agility for a large Asia-Pacific wholesale bank

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