Summary

The world is continually changing. Businesses must be adaptive and agile to flourish and grow. To survive, organizations consolidate through mergers and acquisitions of either the whole company or specific business units. Integrations are disruptive events for both entities, with a lot of unknowns and the potential for missteps is high. Thus, thorough due diligence and the subsequent integration implementation strategy play a critical role in ensuring the success of any integration effort.

A typical integration faces many challenges across areas. For example, How to identify common customers across both banks? Which products to be retained/dropped? How to integrate limit hierarchy of corporate cards across both banks? Which branches & ATMs to retain? How to consolidate customers exposure towards integrated entity? How to align grades, structure & compensation across both entities? How to decide which system to retain/drop/migrate? Answering these questions, among others, is critical in executing a successful integration.

In the last 12 years, Cedar has successfully project managed the merger of 9 banks in the MENA with a combined asset book size of USD 400 Bn+, 600+ branches, 2,000+ ATMs, 5 Mn+ customers, 30,000+ employees and 200+ IT Applications on a fast-track basis. Cedar's integration approach is based on the Balanced Scorecard framework. Cedar's heritage includes being part of the firm that was co-founded by the creators of BSC. The formulation of the approach encompasses an in-depth focus on finance, customer, process, organization and technology.

How we add value

The integration strategy involves identifying key levers across the different areas of the organization. Cedar assists organizations across the entire integration lifecycle.

  • Assist in a detailed due diligence process across valuation the merger/ acquisition, synergies across the organizations.
  • Establish a detailed strategy map for the overall integration of the acquired/ merged businesses.
  • Develop a customer integration plan across customer types and segments.
  • Develop a product integration roadmap across different products offered by the organization across assets and liability products.
  • Develop a process integration plan across the business and operational models of the combined entity.
  • Consolidate the infrastructure assets across the organization and channels (physical and digital) such as branches, ATM's, call centres, etc.
  • Detail a technology integration plan and run the transformation office to implement the project successfully.
  • Enable and ensure cost savings for the organizations through the integration.

Cedar can help perform the necessary due diligence and develop the overall strategy across the areas identified. The overall strategy for due diligence and integrations can be developed in 60-90 days. The technology integration is done through the AGILE project management framework with outputs weekly.

Client Cases

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