Success story · Banking · 2019–2022
Nine banks, one structure.
Programm “Adler”.
The Volksbank association reorganised its division of tasks, responsibilities and processes across nine institutions. My role: the staff unit in which association-wide topics were designed, tracked and set in motion again whenever they stalled.
9 of 9
member banks in a uniform organisational structure
- 77.6 → 75.1%cost-income ratio of the association, H1 2021 → H1 2022
- 4.6 → 1.7%NPL ratio of the association
Association figures according to the published half-year report
Starting point
Nine banks, nine ways, the same task
The Volksbank association consists of eight regional Volksbanks and one specialist bank; Volksbank Wien acts as the central organisation. Having grown historically, this meant different organisation charts, different processes and different responsibilities – with joint liability and joint supervision by the ECB.
In 2019 the Volksbanks adopted Programm “Adler”. The objective: to organise the division of tasks, responsibilities and processes within the association so as to create an efficient basis for the future – steering and services central, customer work regional.
A transformation within a banking group follows its own rules. The real difficulty was not the concept. It was that nine legally independent banks, each with its own management board, had to stand behind the same decisions – voluntarily enough to implement them, and bindingly enough not to sit them out.
My role
Staff unit Strategy & Transition
From June 2019 to November 2022 I worked as Strategy & Transition Manager in the Strategy & Transition Adler staff unit of Volksbank Wien – the central organisation of the association. This is where association-wide topics were designed, tracked through the programme governance and set in motion again whenever they stalled.
This included coordinating the central organisation and eight transition leaders in the member banks – the local implementation leads, whom I coordinated and coached through a uniform monitoring system.
There was a right to issue instructions: the central organisation can set binding requirements for the member banks, formally as a general instruction. We hardly ever needed it. The changes were developed together with the banks and the central organisation – my task was to make sure they then reached the individual banks quickly, without friction and by mutual agreement.
That is the difference that matters: an instruction enforces a decision. It does not ensure that the decision holds in day-to-day business. If you want to bring nine independent banks along for the long term, you convince them – even when you could instruct them.
Approach
Three levers
Defining the collaboration model
Development and implementation of a collaboration model based on service catalogues for the association: analysis of processes within and across departments, optimisation together with the member banks, binding agreement.
In addition, the reorganisation of association-wide bank steering – finance, risk, financial data steering, controlling – including local deputy arrangements, so that operations in the individual banks remained secure.
Bringing about decisions instead of forcing them
Association-wide escalation management and troubleshooting: one central point where stuck topics landed, instead of remaining unresolved between nine banks. The central organisation’s right to issue instructions stayed in the background – using it would have been the most expensive route.
In addition, the role of decision facilitator and communication hub for delegated projects – and ongoing programme governance with tracking of synergies and identification of risks and mitigants: strategic, economic and process-related.
Bringing sales and organisation into line
Optimisation of association-wide structures in sales management, definition and support of the association-wide efficiency programme with process bundling and restructuring of the operational organisation.
In addition, the introduction of outsourcing controls for the member banks vis-à-vis the central organisation, and an online training programme for compact and express loans – including adjustment of the authority levels and of the guidelines in risk management, compliance and underwriting.
Complementing this: the board initiative “Putting the customer first”, from identifying the pain points to implementation in sales, the association-wide youth concept and strengthening the employer brand.
Sales was the area with the greatest remaining autonomy. A service catalogue aligned the activities in sales and marketing, and the total headcount per bank was fixed. What remained open was the allocation: each bank could shift staff between front office and back office like communicating vessels – on the one condition that no back-office area failed for lack of staff.
Leading at a distance
When personal contact disappeared
A large part of the programme fell within the Covid period and had to be implemented largely digitally under lockdown conditions – at a distance, without the usual face-to-face meetings, in a phase of great uncertainty.
That is where the programme was won or lost. Eight transition leaders in eight banks had to carry the same approach without anyone sitting in the same room. The collaboration developed digitally, with a few targeted face-to-face meetings.
If you lead at a distance, you are measured by reliability, not by presence: by clear commitments, by transparency and by whether your word holds.
This is not peculiar to the pandemic. It is the rule in every banking group or corporate programme in which the people involved do not sit in the same place – and the reason why I take commitments and deadlines more seriously there than anywhere else.
Result
Completed ahead of schedule
Programm “Adler” was successfully completed in the first half of 2022, ahead of the planned project end.
Sources: Volksbank Wien AG, investor presentation September 2022 · Volksbank Wien AG (2022). Volksbanken-Verbund – Halbjahresbericht zum 30. Juni 2022 (half-year report as at 30 June 2022, in German). View source (volksbankwien.at, PDF)
Context
How the association developed during the programme period
The following figures are key figures of the Volksbank association, not results attributable to me personally. They describe the environment in which the programme ran.
H1 2021 → H1 2022
12/2015 → 06/2022
The last figure is the remarkable one: customer business grew while headcount and the branch network were reduced. That is exactly the difference between a savings programme and a structural reform.
Source: Volksbank Wien AG, investor presentation September 2022
Voices from the association
How the collaboration was experienced
“You made a very substantial contribution to the success. Alongside keeping the big picture in view, you never lost sight of the needs of the member banks.”
Martin Alge · Member of the Management Board, Volksbank Vorarlberg (at the time of the project) · (Translated from German)
“I have not always been fortunate enough to accompany a project with such a competent, solution-oriented and at the same time extremely pleasant colleague – a project which, moreover, could be brought to an excellent conclusion.”
Thomas Ernst
Head of Bank Steering, VB Niederösterreich (at the time of the project)
(Translated from German)
Feedback from executives and colleagues in Programm “Adler”. Positions as at the time of the collaboration. View all voices from the programme →
Transferable
What I take away from it
Programmes rarely fail because of the concept. They fail at the points where nobody decides. A named escalation point with a short route to the top is more effective than any further status meeting.
A right to issue instructions is no substitute for consent. The central organisation could instruct. Yet only what each bank had understood for itself actually held. If you want to bring nine independent banks along, you have to be able to explain to each one what it gains – not what the head office gains.
Structure beats savings. A programme that only cuts costs loses business. One that reorganises tasks cuts costs and retains the customer business.
The structures from the programme – uniform organisation charts in all nine banks, central steering, regional customer work – still carry the association today. That is the real test of a transformation: not whether it is completed, but whether it lasts.
In depth
Three topics in detail
Putting the customer first
The board initiative within the association: feedback gathered and evaluated from all nine member banks, three streams – instructions, credit process, collaboration model – and five cornerstones for a uniform end-to-end customer process.
A collaboration model for the entire association
Communication and operational organisation across nine banks: association-wide service catalogues as a common language – from the first draft in 2019 to being embedded in day-to-day business in 2022.
Optimising bank steering
Eight specialist departments, three deputy clusters: processes between head office and member banks standardised, 106 activities with regulated deputy cover and no more toxic combinations.
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