Strategic Planning

Any financial services firm that develops its strategic plan without a forward-looking assessment of changing legislative and regulatory factors is omitting a key variable that has proven its impact on the industry over and over again. Regulatory and legislative environmental scans are essential to effective senior management planning, and special reviews for product innovations are also essential. Some examples:

A government-risk review of a proposed P2P payments venture that identified unanticipated risks;
Identification of changes in the Basel risk-based capital rules that could dramatically affect the profitability of a specialized financial institution;
An assessment of emerging rules governing electronic communications networks to identify a client’s comparative advantage in this rapidly changing field.