The Challenge
The leading Greek systemic Bank at the time, while being listed to a major international Stock Exchange was asked to improve significantly major and critical aspects of its business model, namely giving priority to the Credit Function and the Branch Network.
The Approach
We have worked first in collaboration with a leading international strategy firm to define at the high level the changes that needed to be made in order to achieve the broad and deep transformation required.
Such changes included:
- the centralization and where applicable (depending on customer segments) standardization of credit decisions changing fundamentally the credit function and introducing new central entities such as “credit factories” for SME loans.
- The reconfiguration of the role and nature of bank branches enhancing their role in commercial and customer service activities and reducing/eliminating administrative/backoffice functions, moved to more centralized structures,
Subsequently, PLANET undertook the project on its own, supporting the Bank to implement the prescribed and approved services across the whole Bank centrally and at the branch network level.
Bringing a legacy systemic bank to a new era
The implementation took a long period of time involving hands-on project management and contribution of PLANET both at the detailed design and at the execution of tasks related to onboarding the bank personnel to their new/changed roles and challenges.
Results & Impact
The Bank was the first to implement at that scale a centralized credit function, while this as well as the commercial transformation of the branch network accompanied by the centralization of backoffice processes, created a reference case that all legacy systemic banks in Greece followed a little later.
