Client Background
The client is a leading Islamic bank in Kuwait undertaking a core banking transformation to replace its legacy Islamic banking platform with a tier-1 core banking system. The change touches almost every operational department, bringing new screens and data capture requirements, a shift from real-time to batch accounting, new approval flows and a role-based access model. Leadership wanted a clear, evidence-based view of where the change would land hardest, and where it would help, before committing to training, communication and adoption plans. Cedar was mandated to conduct a change readiness and impact assessment as part of the programme's change management workstream.
Cedar’s Approach
Cedar applied a structured, end-to-end change impact assessment methodology across people, process and system dimensions, designed to translate design documentation into targeted training and adoption actions. The work progressed through five modules:
Design Document Review – Cedar reviewed the core banking workstream's business solution design, interface and functional specification documents across 14 workstreams and catalogued more than 350 processes, mapping each to the departments that own it.
Leadership and Stakeholder Engagement – Around 15 senior leaders across digital, IT, risk, compliance, finance, treasury, strategy, consumer, corporate and operations were interviewed to capture change objectives. Cedar then engaged 30 departmental stakeholders through interviews and workshops and appointed single points of contact across 17 departments to validate responses.
Process Rationalisation – Three filter gates removed processes that were unused, duplicated, unmapped, handled by conversion tooling or not yet tested by the business, refining the inventory to 211 processes for detailed assessment.
Impact Metric Design – Each process was rated on a seven-point scale from major beneficial to major adverse change, plus no impact, based on workload, automation and standardisation, with worked examples to keep ratings consistent across departments.
Department Deep-Dives – For every department Cedar profiled the roles, processes and systems involved, rated each process and documented specific limitations, such as multi-screen navigation, authorisation routing gaps, queue-based payment handling and reporting lag in the investment subsidiary.
Strategic Outcome and Way Forward
The assessment showed that a clear majority of assessed processes would benefit from the new platform, driven by automation, richer reporting, stronger controls, greater product flexibility, improved sanctions screening and transaction monitoring, and a role-based access matrix that simplifies staff movements across departments. Negative impact was concentrated in a small number of areas, notably central processing and treasury settlements and payments, and stemmed mainly from a steep learning curve, additional screens and new data capture requirements. Cedar highlighted five high-impact workstreams, spanning accounts and deposits, treasury settlement and payments, credit administration, accounting and reporting, and salary and batch processing, and all 17 departments signed off on the findings.
The results give the bank a validated, department-level heat map to prioritise role-specific training, focused communication and resistance management where adoption risk is highest. These actions sit within change objectives covering service excellence, communication and transparency, agility, innovation, employee readiness, and governance and accountability through stabilisation.