EY banking strategists and advisory teams worked with the bank’s team leaders worldwide to analyze the most effective ways to reduce the bank’s costs by:
- Assessing digital and operational maturity to eliminate non-value added work, deflecting work to lower cost channels, and driving automation to reduce processing costs.
- Rationalizing and redirecting existing investment plans to better align with the bank’s digital and business needs.
- Developing a governance model to drive global consistency efficiently to achieve overall targets and allow for local customization.
During a period of 12-14 weeks, EY worked swiftly with the bank to produce a strategy that would gain the full support of the board. As a result, each measure was devised to reduce the bank’s costs in the most effective way, while not damaging ongoing operations and the bank’s reputation amongst its customers. EY’s work in carefully considering each stage of the cost reduction program secured complete trust from the board that this strategy was the correct one to implement.
In addition, the strategy was underpinned by a firm focus on sustainability. According to Alice Zhou, Senior Manager for Financial Services at EY, “in order for the cost to be sustainable, every initiative had to balance out the experience, efficiency and effectiveness.”