Corporate Banking

Commercial Banking is undergoing an era of unprecedented change. Growth remains challenging, especially for lending, and is unlikely to return to trend in the near term. Excess RM and product partner capacity still exists in the market putting downward pressure on prices. Core banking and treasury management products are becoming commoditized, and new regulations, such as the repeal of Regulation Q, are driving up complexity and costs.

The Commercial Banking practice focuses on helping our clients solve their most challenging revenue and growth issues. Our hallmark is analytical rigor. We have built our practice on insights drawn from investments in proprietary wallet and market data, structured surveys that help us understand customer needs and buying behaviors, and through our work with clients across all segments of commercial banking. Particular areas of expertise include:

1. Sale Effectiveness. Novantas has developed our proprietary PEAK performance framework to help RMs, TMOs, and other product partners to improve sales productivity by 10% - 30%. Today, most banks have widely varying sales practices resulting in large differences in performance. Our approach focuses on identifying critical behaviors that impact purchase decisions. We use proprietary research models to identify sales behaviors from the perspectives of both prospects and top-performing salespeople. Our solution allows management to refine and focus the sales process and key enablers (e.g., technology, prospect analytics, coaching) on a handful of high-impact priorities that provide the most uplift.
2. Lead Generation Analytics. In our experience, banks miss up to 50% of “lead” opportunities related to new client acquisition, cross-sell and retention. The result is a lot of money being left on the table at a time when budgets are tight and performance targets are a challenge to meet. The most common causes include lack of standard processes, poor/inaccessible data and limited awareness of what’s possible. Our approach is straightforward and practical. We use our proprietary models to identify specific leads to pursue while also building the organizational capabilities for banks to produce better quality leads on their own, over time.
3. Pricing. Few banks take a strategic view of pricing even though it is often the most significant lever available to boost profitable growth. Realizing a 1% increase in price boost profits more than three times as much as a comparable boost in sales. Whether it is for deposits, loans or fee-based services, banks should be pricing based on the value delivered to clients. Most banks, however, base pricing on costs or on comparison to competitors, with little attention to client factors. Novantas believes pricing should be tailored to market segments, client behaviors and price sensitivity. We have developed proprietary methods, models and tools, including our ONE framework for fees, to implement precision pricing in commercial banking, including a powerful approach to negotiated pricing.
4. 

   “ONE” Framework for Commercial Fee Growth

   Fee Growth Strategies. Overall fee income is flat, but most banks are leaving money on the table both short and longer-term. We see the most effective organizations taking a multi- horizon view. Shorter-term opportunities typically involve using pricing to optimize existing customers/products (elasticity optimization; negotiated pricing; waivers; leakage). Medium term efforts focus on market share growth through advanced targeting analytics and enhanced customer information. Finally, longer term opportunities include tadjacencies — both markets and offerings (e.g., processing services). To support our client engagements, we have developed the ONE (Optimize, New Sales, Expansion) framework.

Novantas also has deep expertise in Treasury Management. In the current slow growth environment, only those banks that outperform competitors will thrive. We support our clients with a full range of consulting services in Treasury Management. We advise on strategy, including focusing on the most promising markets and tailoring investment and go-to-market plans accordingly. We apply proven Novantas sales and pricing methodologies and tools to the unique requirements of Treasury Management. We provide full support for product strategy and development including market research, product life-cycle planning, requirements definition, IT platform assessment and make/buy/white-label analyses. Most importantly, we understand the need to integrate Treasury Management with other elements of commercial banking into a holistic, client-centric approach.