A regional bank rethinking its corporate franchise
Strategy reset for a corporate-banking division facing margin compression after a five-year run of cheap funding.
A regional bank's corporate franchise had grown steadily through a period of abundant low-cost deposits. As funding costs normalised, several segments became loss-making at current pricing, and the leadership team was unsure which to defend, which to reposition, and which to exit.
We ran a ten-week engagement, partner-led throughout, that started with a paid two-week diagnostic. The diagnostic produced a written read of where margin was actually being earned and lost — different from the bank's own management reporting in three material ways.
From there we ran six working sessions with the executive team across four weeks. Each session focused on one decision and ended with that decision made. The bank exited two segments, repriced three, and committed new investment to two adjacent ones where the franchise was strongest.
The engagement closed with a one-page handover and a final session with the chair. There has been no follow-on work; we agreed at the start that there would not be unless the bank explicitly initiated it.