Of importance is to have clarity of purpose that is communicated, shared and understood by all levels of staff, especially the front-office staff. Having a culture that is built around such commonality of purpose will ensure consistent service performance. Another further aspect is the design of the operational processes with customers’ perspective in mind to ensure easy access, speedy and accurate execution of transactions that are responsive to many facets of customers’ demands. To facilitate this, it is essential that banking institutions embrace the relevant technology to support business processes, enhance risk management capabilities while at the same time provide seamless access to customers through a wider range of delivery channels. All these need to be supported with an effective human resource management framework that ensures the availability of best talent and the right skills. As competition intensifies, banking institutions increasingly must be able to deliver personalised and customised financial solutions. Therefore, it is important for institutions to understand the dynamics of customer segmentation, build customer relationship and address requirements and preferences of specific segments. Understanding specific segments requires banking institutions to understand complex intangibles such as customer behaviour, motivation and life events. Sustainable growth will be very much dependent on the ability to develop lasting and profitable relationships with customers. Investing in new products in meeting the complex customer needs and demands is important. Equally important is the need to develop an effective communication plan or strategy as a package to product delivery.
And even in the US, nearly all “SPE groups” will need to ensure that there exists intra-group debt, issued by key subsidiaries around the world to the holding company, that can be written down when a distressed subsidiary would otherwise need to be resolved. For “MPE groups”, many will need to do more to organise themselves into well-defined regional and functional subgroups, perhaps with regional or functional intermediate holding companies, which could be subjected to SPE resolutions. And these groups will need to ensure that common services, such as IT, are provided by stand-alone entities under contracts that are robust enough to survive the break up of the group. There will be implications for the regulatory regime too. As I see it, the amount of equity that a host regulator requires to be held in a subsidiary over and above the Basel minimum may vary according to whether it is part of an “SPE group” in which the parent/holding company is a source of strength through resolution. Where that is the case, it may be possible to shade the subsidiary’s capital structure from equity to subordinated debt issued to the HoldCo. Where the group as a whole is not a source of strength in resolution, a subsidiary may need more equity than otherwise. What I am describing would entail some recasting of the key pillars of international supervisory cooperation: the Basel Concordat, Core Principles of Supervision, and Capital Accord.3 (3)  There is no such thing as a “bailin bond”. Bailin is a resolution tool.