The WTW Financial Institutions Industry Group focuses on five key areas: banking and capital markets, insurance, investment management, fintech and non-banking financial institutions. We help clients across these areas manage complex risks, cultivate talent and explore new work options including automation and artificial intelligence (AI).
Complex and interconnected risks
We will work with you to address the range of risks that financial institutions face starting with macroeconomic risks, the top concern of C-level executives.
Other critical risks are related to:
- Regulatory changes and complexity. Regulatory pressures have increased the cost of capital, prompted large-scale divestment, reshaped attitudes towards risk and redrawn the boundary between retail and wholesale banking.
- Digitalization and technological advances. Technological advancement is impacting the finance industry as new challengers are emerging and growing customer expectations drives significant IT infrastructure investment. A rapidly expanding IT infrastructure also gives way to increasing cyber risk.
- Business operating model pressures. Regulation and the increasing cost of capital is exerting pressure on business operating structures, driving segmentation and disintermediation in the financial sector.
- Changes in investment, capital sources and returns. Non-bank financial institutions, fintech companies and new investors are bringing fresh capital into the sector while banks meet capital requirements, manage stress tests and spend on compliance upgrades.
Having the right risk mitigation partner is key. We have decades of experience managing complex, interconnected risks for financial institutions.
Insurance advice and solutions
We specialize in providing insurance advice and solutions to protect and strengthen financial institutions around the world:
- Trade credit. With Trade Credit Insurance, companies can generally extend more open credit to customers or enter new sectors or markets. This has the impact of reducing the risk of non-payment, thereby enabling sales growth without a corresponding increase in risk.
- Political risk insurance for financial institutions. Political risk insurance can protect financial institutions when the borrower or their operations are adversely affected by political events.
- Political violence including terrorism. We provide terrorism expertise to any company operating and expanding business in dense cities with large populations and/or in locations or occupancies which are a high attraction to terrorist groups. Terrorism insurance protects companies from physical damage and business interruption in the event of an attack.
- Bank non-payment. This cover protects against the financial default of a borrower or counterparty.
- Project finance. We provide guidance on suitable insurance cover to protect project assets and revenue streams. Our team has an extensive understanding of the issues that may need to be resolved to satisfy lenders, the potential commercial pressures and timescales typically involved, and the communication flows required between all parties.
- Structuring. Our structuring team broadens the range of asset classes covered to include assets from new transactions arranged by the client, existing assets held in a portfolio or legacy assets where exit or resolution is the objective.
Cultivating talent and exploring new work options
In today’s rapidly evolving financial landscape, it’s essential to be able to attract, retain and engage talent with the ability to respond to increasing regulatory pressures, a changing approach to risk management and the emergence of new markets. Moreover, talent with digital skills is in particularly high demand with the advent of robo-advisors in wealth management, online-only banks and peer-to-peer funding.
Using our Total Rewards Optimization methodology we can help you better understand the rewards that your employees value most and least, and model the cost and impact of reward changes on attraction, retention and engagement. You can then use this information to develop unique Total Rewards strategies for your key workforce segments.
Technological breakthroughs in areas ranging from artificial intelligence and robotics to blockchain technology and telematics, are upending not only the way in which financial institutions interact with customers and the products they offer but how work gets done. We can help you “deconstruct” jobs into tasks or projects and tap a range of sources for getting work done – from robotics and AI to contract workers and talent on platforms. In addition, we can keep you up to date on how your competitors are approaching the future of work.
Gaining competitive advantage
In a complex and uncertain financial environment, we can help you identify the approaches to managing risk, cultivating talent and exploring new work options that will set you apart from the competition.
