Recent years have been a challenging period for the financial sector: first the COVID-19 pandemic, then geopolitical unrest simultaneously in several parts of the world, including Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. All of this resulted in rising inflation, an economic slowdown and regulatory actions that banks have faced and will still face in the coming years.
The year 2022 finally showed a very strong performance of the banking sector in Europe. According to the latest Kearney “Retail Banking Radar” report, surveying nearly 100 institutions in our region, banks reported the highest revenue per customer, per employee and lowest C/I in at least five years. These results, however, required a huge effort. Looking back 15 years (since the 2007-2008 financial crisis), productivity per employee nearly doubled and per branch nearly tripled.
In Poland, the fundamentals also looked excellent last year, although the final results were affected by provisions and write-downs related to foreign currency loans and credit vacations.
The agenda for the next few years looks particularly interesting: How to reconcile the “fire” of further efficiency gains (after more than a decade of dynamic efficiency gains) with the “water” of the need for ever-increasing “client-centricity”: the need to perfectly understand the needs of a particular client and the ability to tailor the offer and operating model to them. This is what the panelists will discuss.
KEY ISSUES
- High inflation and interest rates, economic slowdown, challenges in the mortgage market – how will they affect the banking sector in 2023-2025?
- Can banks’ operating models keep up with changing customer expectations?
- How to further increase efficiency after more than a decade of intensive efforts in this direction?
- “Customer-centricity”: what does it mean and how to achieve it?
- Agility, data analytics and advanced technologies: what are the implications for reconciling “fire” with “water”?
