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

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.

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.

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.
Expand Research Works with Leading Financial Institutions
Expand Research—currently working with 26 of the world’s top 30 financial services organizations—delivers unique decision-support services such as benchmark comparisons and industry diagnostics. We help financial institutions develop, validate, and execute better business strategies.
Our Insights on Wholesale Banking

Article
March 2, 2023
This is no time for complacency. The improving interest rate environment may provide temporary relief, but banks need to use this cushion to fund their transformation.

Article
February 21, 2023
By moving early, banks can enjoy higher returns, capture key relationships across the value chain, and gain share in two growing markets.

Article
December 8, 2022
Regulators, development banks, and financial institutions hold the key to reaching net zero in the region. How can they approach the transition for the benefit of all stakeholders?

Article
May 6, 2021
Savings are waiting to be tapped in many areas. Banks that take an aggressive approach to improving procurement can boost net income before taxes by 3% to 4%.
Video
February 18, 2021
Wholesale Banking Reinvention
The wholesale banking business ecosystem faces numerous challenges and disruptions in its value chain—navigating an evolving regulatory framework,
reducing costs, optimizing capital, and developing sustainable finance and investing practices.
Video
July 26, 2023
What’s Possible? GenAI and Banking
Banks have plenty of customer data and tech expertise, but will need to balance the opportunities of generative AI against privacy, accuracy, and compliance concerns.
Michael Strauss takes a look at tomorrow's opportunities.
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.




