Major US Bank: Merger and Acquisition Services

This bank is one of the world's largest financial institutions and offers a full range of financial services to individuals and businesses. The bank provides services to clients through thousands of retail locations in nearly 200 countries and serves the majority of corporations in the Fortune Global 500.

Over the course of a decade, the bank completed a series of complex acquisitions—creating one of the broadest franchises in the United States, and becoming a dominant leader in all its key geographies.

However, the size, scope and geographic complexity of the integration efforts created major challenges:

• Thousands of branch banks and ATMs needed to be converted.
• Millions of customer accounts required updating.
• Staff in multiple locations had to be retrained.
• Large-scale rebranding efforts would need to be initiated.

Succeeding in its aggressive acquisition and growth strategy required rethinking the bank’s standard operating platform. The new, optimal platform needed to better facilitate the integration of acquisitions as well as to create operational efficiencies and provide a common customer experience.

Recognizing Accenture’s proven expertise in global financial services merger integration and banking operations, the bank selected Accenture to help execute its ambition to become a high-performance business.

Accenture understood that speed was essential for the bank to maximize cost reductions and achieve business value throughout the integration process. Working with the bank’s leadership, Accenture helped identify the functional, operational, technological and communication gaps among its constituent entities.

Then, in concert with the bank’s senior management team, Accenture formulated solutions to bridge the existing systems with the proposed solutions and assisted with integration support projects.

• Standard platform design and implementation. Accenture provided deep integration capabilities that shortened the integration schedule and reduced operational risks. After defining the target operating model, Accenture helped the bank estimate future business volumes and develop work plans for tasks, time lines and human resource requirements. Once implemented, the operating model successfully consolidated banking operations.
  
  
• Operations streamlining. Accenture’s ability to move quickly contributed to the speed of execution and helped create repeatable processes. Conversion teams ensured effectiveness of the integration through comprehensive product and customer service mapping. Skilled resources also assisted with implementing the multiple, site-specific legal requirements for each location involved. As needed, new business practices and processes were developed to increase customer service and operational efficiencies.
  
  
• Training and rebranding. The team developed a comprehensive training program to prepare the workforce for the new operating environment. Nearly 50 hours of training were delivered per staff member. Comprehensive rebranding efforts were also executed over the course of multiple acquisitions, resulting in one of the largest rebranding operations in banking history.

Working together, Accenture and the bank successfully completed a series of large technology systems and customer conversions—on time and on budget, a critical component of delivering on shareholder and market expectations for each merger.

Thousands of employees in hundreds of locations received training on updated processes and services, and many branch locations reduced teller transaction times by more than 50 percent. Millions of customers were notified about the conversions and millions of online banking customer accounts were converted.

The new platform now serves millions of customers across the United States through banking centers, ATMs and across an award-winning online banking system. Advisor retention has also remained in line or exceeded expectations.