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Financial Services
Control, cost, and the regulator's view of both.
Operating model and technology change inside institutions where every decision has an examiner on the other side of it.
The sector
We work on operating model, cost and technology change inside institutions where every decision has an examiner on the other side of it.
The constraint is not ambition. It is that anything you change has to be explicable to a supervisor afterwards, which means the change has to be designed to be explained. Work that cannot be evidenced is work that will be unwound.
Start here
Anything you change has to be explicable afterwards.
The binding constraint in financial services is not ambition or budget. It is that a supervisor will eventually ask why a decision was made, and the answer has to be evidenced rather than remembered.
That has a design consequence most programmes discover late: the change has to be built to be explained. Work that cannot be evidenced tends, in the end, to be unwound.
- Operating model
In scope - Cost, structure and how work moves through a regulated institution.
- Regulatory change
In scope - Translating a supervisory requirement into operational change.
- Core platforms & data
In scope - Modernization programmes and the lineage work supervisors now ask about directly.
- Offshore governance
In scope - Third-party and location risk, which has moved up the supervisory agenda.
- Investment advice
Not us - We do not advise on investments or make securities recommendations.
- Regulated activity
Not us - We are not a broker-dealer and hold no registrations.
What is changing
Three shifts we are working against.
01
Control expectations rose faster than the estates
Supervisory attention moved to operational resilience and third-party risk, which most technology estates were never designed to evidence.
02
Cost programmes ran out of easy room
The reductions available without touching the operating model have largely been taken.
03
Data is now a supervisory matter
Lineage and quality have moved from an internal concern to something examiners ask about directly.
Where we work
Across the sector, not one corner of it.
Asset & wealth management
Payments & fintech
Specialty finance
Market infrastructure
What we bring
Every service line, applied to Financial Services.
Our thinking
What we pride ourselves on.
True of every Taidou engagement regardless of sector — and the three things we are most often told are unusual.
The person who scopes it runs it.
There is no handoff between the team that wins the work and the team that does it. If you met someone in the first conversation, you will still be dealing with them in the last one. This is the single thing clients tell us they notice first.
We write down what we are not doing.
Every engagement starts with a scope that names the things we have deliberately excluded and why. It makes the first conversation harder and every conversation after it easier.
We stay past the point it is comfortable.
Most firms hand over when the design is agreed and the change has been announced — the moment of maximum fragility. We hand over to named owners after it is running, and we come back to check.
Common questions
Before you call us.
No. We are a management consulting firm. We do not provide investment advice, make securities recommendations or carry out any registered activity.
We work with you on the response. We do not represent clients to regulators or certify anything on your behalf.
That evidence is produced as a by-product of the process rather than assembled afterwards for an examination. It costs a little more to design and removes most of the cost of every examination after.
Where the sector meets
The sector calendar.
September
FinovateFall
New York — financial technology
October
Sibos
Banking and financial infrastructure
November
Money20/20
Payments and financial services
Related thinking
What we have published on this sector.
Work
Back-office migration across three delivery centres
ResearchOffshore was about cost. The next wave is about control.
The savings case was won a decade ago. What separates institutions now is whether they can see, govern and move the work.
ResearchInteroperability isn't a compliance deadline. It's a business model.
CMS-0057-F is being treated as a date to survive. The organizations treating it as an operating decision are the ones still compounding on it in three years.
Taidou Answer
Bring us the problem, not the category.
Taidou Answer takes the question in your words, indexes it across 11 industries and 8 service lines, and routes you to the person who has solved it before.