Key takeaways
- Established clear ownership and structure for the Deposits function in financial services, reducing fragmentation and silos.
- Enabled leadership alignment and faster decision-making through a shared view of the current and future state.
- Delivered a practical implementation roadmap to support scalable growth.
The situation
The client was formed during the merger of two Canadian financial services organizations, creating a leading institution across alternative lending, mortgages, and card services. Within this newly combined organization, the Deposits function was fragmented across Operations and Finance, with no clear ownership.
This fragmentation led to siloed decision-making and an inconsistent funding strategy across channels, including broker and consumer segments. The merger further increased urgency to address these structural inefficiencies and establish a scalable operating model capable of supporting future lending growth.
The solution and approach
We conducted a targeted assessment of the existing organizational structure and operating model, leveraging available documentation, including organizational charts and standard operating procedures. We complemented this with in-depth stakeholder interviews across Operations and Finance to build a comprehensive understanding of the current state.
Based on these insights, we established a clear baseline of team structures, roles and responsibilities, workflows, and interdependencies, along with key operational challenges in the merged financial services institution. We validated findings with executive leadership to align on priorities, then developed and evaluated multiple target-state organizational design options. Through an iterative design process with senior leaders, we defined a future-state structure for the Deposits function tailored to support strategic growth and operational efficiency.
The results
The engagement created strong alignment across stakeholders on both current-state challenges and future-state priorities, enabling more informed and cohesive decision-making. Leadership reached consensus on the path forward and was equipped with a clear implementation roadmap, including key actions such as establishing a dedicated leader for the Deposits function. This positioned the organization to operate more efficiently and scale its deposit capabilities in support of long-term growth.