The Challenge
Agricultural Bank, one of the largest in assets Greek banks met its biggest challenge when following deregulation of the banking sector had to undergo a total overhaul of its business and operating model away from its state-oriented establishment within the banking system.
The Approach
PLANET as a cornerstone member of a consortium combining a broad array of capabilities and led by a prominent Greek Systems Integrator that implemented a totally new and innovative core banking system played a very active role in both the design and implementation phases of this complex engagement.
Designing and implementing a complete transformation of a state-owned bank
Namely, the overall engagement where PLANET had an active role across all either with project management responsibility or contributing resources, consisted of sub-projects for:
- New strategy development for the bank, upgrading the service model of its legacy clientele in the farming sector but also targeting other lucrative segments such as SMEs and retail customers,
- Full scope business process re-engineering taking also advantage of the capabilities of the new information system,
- Complete reorganization of the bank introducing enhanced governance, business unit structures, reconfiguration of the branch network into a more commercial role with a hub and spoke structure considering also the size of the branch network (the largest at the time in Greece) and centralization of back-office processes
- Modernization of Human Resource processes and systems including performance and compensation management
- Upgrade of Risk Management function
- Parametrizing and implementing the new core information system to support all of the above from a technology perspective
- Managing extensively the change that all of the above brought into the bank by implementing a 2-year personnel onboarding programme both at the central and at the local (branch) level.
Results & Impact
After the 3-year transformation, the Bank emerged considerably changed in comparison to its past, actively competing in the banking market until the financial crisis led to a severe consolidation of the Greek banking sector resulting in most state-owned banks to be integrated with private banks such as was the case of the Agricultural Bank.
