BANKING + FINANCE – Ensuring positive messages resonate with the public to protect reputations and profit margins.
With public trust in financial institutions at a historic low and the global economic crisis creating a turbulent environment, many companies are struggling to protect their reputation and profit margins.
There is no better time than now for a financial services company to promote its own brand strengths. The challenge is ensuring positive messages resonate with the public amid the surrounding negativity. Our teams make up the most experienced professionals in the industry and understand the various situations and stakeholders the client must engage.
We have helped financial and professional services firms around the world endure various economic cycles and rebuild public trust. As companies seek to increase their client base, extend their brands or explore new sectors or geographies, our network is ideally suited to deliver measurable results.
Financial Services:
Money is the name of the game in the financial services industry. Companies of this nature are involved in the creation, storage, utilization, management, and manipulation of money. Such companies include banks, insurance agencies, brokerage houses, accounting firms, and real estate agencies.
Industry Composition
The financial services industry is comprised of a variety of businesses providing services broadly related to insurance, accounting, banking, brokerage, real estate, risk analysis, asset management, and investment.
Insurance firms either provide insurance themselves as insurance carries or sell the services of others as insurance brokers.
Banks can be commercial or private, on the global, national, regional, or community level, and offer the safekeeping and lending of money as their primary services.
Brokerage firms act as intermediaries between buyers and sellers for a variety of things, such as securities, equities, and other investment offerings.
Real estate firms provide services such as buying, selling, developing, operating, and managing real estate.
All work related to money or asset management that a business needs done is filed under Financial Services, while all of the other miscellaneous help a business may need is classified under Business Services.
Trends
Technology, specifically the internet, has drastically effected on the way companies do business; clients can check their bank accounts online at any time, companies can pay employees through direct deposit, operations in the securities industry have become almost completely automated, and insurers can look up information such as a credit report on potential subscribers more quickly. Computer technology is also used in many other ways as these firms are dependant on computer generated models to help them analyze markets and create investment strategies.
The cleaning up of the industry is an effort to make sure financial organizations are operating in ways that benefit customers or stockholders instead of managers, specifically through consolidation and regulation. Since 1995, more than 200 large and small makes have merged, creating huge economies of scale. Consolidation is for cing layoffs, but also creating more opportunity. The Glass- Steagall Act was the basis of financial regulation, but during the late 90’s this act was repealed, creating opportunities for small and large banks alike. With the market collapse in 2008, there have been many more buyouts. These are due to both banks trying to eliminate bad, or “toxic” assets, and the banks trying to have enough assets to be able to absorb these losses and still survive. Banks are also being accused of misleading the general public in order to drive up their profit margins and are the subject of much scrutiny and debate about increased regulation due to this.
Industry Leaders
Berkshire Hathaway (United States), AXA Group (France), Allianz (Germany), ICBC (China), Fannie Mae (United States)
