Optimisation of the alignment of business and credit functions in the private bank segment in a South African bank

Abstract

Currently the sales and credit departments of Private Banks have divergent business objectives. The sales department’s primary objective is to sell the bank’s products and generate revenue through new business acquisition, while the credit department’s objective is to balance risk and reward by ensuring that capital is deployed in the most effective manner. In the private bank department of the bank that was studied, these divergent objectives have led to inefficiencies in the business processes and have promoted the silo-based operations, which impact the customer experience negatively. Several strategies for future implementation were identified in order to optimise the alignment between the sales and credit functions of the private banking department of the bank. The strategies were categorised into customer centricity, relationship pricing, alignment of personal key performance indicators, addressing of system inefficiencies and exploring various alternate strategies (e.g. strategies that aim to achieve a better understanding of each others’ roles and work pressures better; improving communication; aligning their goals; working towards supporting the success of each department). It was found that there was a strong alignment of the views of the private bank staff (credit and sales viewed as a group) towards the future strategies. When the views of the credit staff were compared with the views of the sales staff, it was found that there was alignment of the opinions of the two departments on the futures strategies that could be implemented to allow credit and sales to work more effectively together.