Challenges for Hong Kong banks: how to cut costs
Technology and digital solutions the way to go
Hong Kong banks are not going to suddenly find their budgets freed up this year. Once again, they will have to maintain a razor-sharp focus on cost reduction, efficiency and profitability.
To do that, financial services managers should move beyond tactical cost reductions and focus on generating higher efficiencies. The days of nip and tuck cuts are over.
To achieve truly meaningful and sustainable efficiency is not easy. Indeed, in our “Top Ten Challenges For Investment Banks 2017” report, we identify aggressive cost reduction as one of the key focuses.
Our view is that the prerequisites for successful efficiency include:
• A top-down mandate capable of crossing business and operating silos, and enforcing a “bank first” view (rather than having certain departments or products dominate the perspective).
• A truly front-to-back process to help verify costs are fully understood, solutions address root causes and downstream effects are minimised.