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Recent weeks have proved highly fruitful for the financial services practice at Interim Partners. The clouds have parted and the summer sun is shining once more after a remarkably lengthy storm. Levels of interim placements have risen, client instructions are increasing and I am experiencing regular sightings of that up to now rarest of species – the committed client with money to spend. As a naturally optimistic individual it is all too easy for me to convert four weeks into a long term trend but reality dictates that the financial services market remains highly volatile.
A large amount of uncertainty hangs over the market in no small part to the differing attitudes of the political parties; probability dictates that within a year or so we will have a new Government, one which is committed to radical reform of the regulatory bodies which will effectively abolish the FSA. The rational for doing so is logical and would appear simple, removing the ambiguity of the tripartite system and bringing more accountability to a single party, namely the Bank of England. In practice, implementing such radical change and a smooth migration of responsibility without increasing nervousness in an already unstable market in my view will prove very difficult.
I would welcome comments from interim managers with regard to the levels of activity in the financial services market and your thoughts on wider issues.
Andrew McIntee is a Director and Head of Financial Services Practice at Interim Partners.
July 31st, 2009 at 9:00 am
Like you my cup is always half full … and like you I agree there are signs that the market is becoming more active in my own specialist area of marketing.
From where I sit it’s been recently looking like a market of two halves, namely…
‘Back office’ – HR, Finance and Procurement – seem to be quite active, but given the focus can be about cutting overheads/cost it’s not that surprising!
‘Front of house’ – Sales and Marketing – have been slower as these are the areas that require investment to grow the business.
So here’s to less ‘battening down the hatches’ and more investment and growth!
July 31st, 2009 at 9:40 am
Colin – I agree that the market is very segmented, I have mentioned in previous blog entries that compliance, risk and cost reduction are areas of the interim market which are very active whilst others such as sales, marketing and project delivery are much slower.
In the last 2 weeks I have placed 4 interims; 2 to undertake a Lean/Six Sigma project for a large Bank in London, an interim Risk Director for a pension provider in Edinburgh and a credit specialist for a Consulting business in London. All of these are driven by demand for cost reduction or tighter regulatory controls.
It has been some time since I have been tasked by clients to find interims to drive the top line, which is not great news for Interim Marketing professionals such as yourself, but ultimately cost reductions will be complete and growth will be the priority once more.
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Recovery or green shoots wilting? An England Ashes victory? Sadly I think it’s too early to tell on both counts but the recent weeks have certainly seen an increase in positivity which we need to continue to encourage.
I would echo Andrew and Colin’s comments re the segmentation of activity. What I’ve also found interesting are the middle to top tiers in the Building Society sector. Perhaps once seen as the ‘steady Eddies’, more recently I’ve noticed a real step change in their activity.
Leveraging their localised and trusted brands, they seem to be capitalising on the banks’ recent fall from grace by developing offerings aimed at capturing more mainstream consumer banking activity. Could the economic situation result in us taking a step closer to the German model of banking, with a greater emphasis on regional financial institutions? Has anyone else noticed similar activity?
August 5th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
To all the comments to date, with which I broadly agree, I would add the following observations/predictions:
1. There is definitely a distinction out there between front and back/top-line vs bottom line and also a distinct focus – increasingly on the risk function. I believe that the retail and small business banks’ reputations have been irreparably damaged through this crisis and it will be non-tradtiional players who will move to fill this space – watch out for the merged Co-op and Britannia brands with huge, valued brand reputations
2. There will continue to be seismic shifts in the whole FS market and most likely the break up and “back to basics” separation of retail from investment etc. It is disturbing that after so recent a crisis we are seeing a return to old behaviours already
3. Regulation will change – at least structurally if not in more fundamental ways. The FSA and the EU authorities were committed to a principles based framework of regualtion – this now may no longer be sufficient given the degrees of freedom which this allows in interpretation and accountability is weaker.
I have argued for a long time that building muscle and capability around regulatory change is something banks should be doing in anticiaption of more and more regulatory change – rather than one-off exercises – take the example of Risk as a corporate function – Regulatory change capability to sense and respond in advance rather than scramble and lag behind – is something the more enlightnened players will be doing