Problems › The Team Is Not Executing the Plan › Banks & Financial Services

The Team Is Not Executing the Plan
in Banks & Financial Services

When a plan is not being executed in a bank, the usual cause is that the organisation is rationally optimising for efficiency ratio and cost of funds instead. Banks and financial services firms carry a specific bind here — the branch network is simultaneously the deposit moat and the cost problem — and the relationship knowledge sits in six people close to retirement. Until that is priced, efficiency ratio will keep moving for reasons nobody can attribute, and the debate about decision latency will stay a matter of opinion.

The short answer

Execution failure is rarely unwillingness. It is normally that the plan asks for behaviour the branch network structure, the deposit beta incentives or the limited origination capacity actively discourage — and people resolve that conflict the way the system pays them to.

The diagnostic question is not "why is nobody doing this" but "what is the person being asked to give up, and who compensates them for it". A plan that requires a lending team to sacrifice origination per banker for someone else's deposit concentration will not run, however well communicated.

The second common cause is arithmetic: the plan requires more capacity than exists in the six people close to retirement who hold the relationship knowledge, and rather than saying so, the organisation quietly does the subset it can and the rest simply never happens.

How to tell this is actually your problem

These three together are the signature. One on its own usually points somewhere else.

✓ The plan is understood and agreed and the efficiency ratio still shows no movement
✓ Progress is reported as number of meetings held rather than change in net interest margin or deposit beta
✓ The bankers asked to change are measured on commercial lending book growth that the change reduces

The move that usually makes it worse. Communicating harder, which addresses a comprehension problem that does not exist and delays finding the incentive that does.

Who this is for — and who it is not

It is for you if you run or finance a bank and the plan is understood and agreed and still nothing changes. It is the situation where the numbers are available but nobody has put them in an order that produces a decision.

It is not for you if Percision is the wrong tool if you already know the answer and only need execution capacity, or if the business is pre-revenue — then the constraint is evidence about the market, not analysis of your own figures. Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library. Also wrong if you need facilitation, politics, or someone to sit with a lender or buyer. Those are human jobs.

Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library.

What this looks like when the analysis is actually run

Below is an excerpt from a real run of this analysis on a bank. It is a sample profile rather than a customer, and it is unedited engine output — this is the format you get, on your own numbers.

The subject is Harborline Financial Group, a sample company profile used for testing rather than a customer — $3.1B commercial lending book, $410M of deposits.

Excerpt from a real Percision run · Competitive Positioning · sample company profile

The move. Codify retiring relationship knowledge and modernize treasury services to extend the 36-48 month deposit franchise durability by 12-18 months while capturing $15M+ annual fee income.

The leak it closes. 18% profit-pool leakage to digital treasury platforms reduced to 10-12% through competitive UX; 61% digital account opening abandonment reduced to 25-30% through streamlined onboarding

The assumption it rests on. Digital treasury substitution stays ≤3% per year for next 36 months — the engine put the probability at 0.55.

What the run committed to
Investment required	$20-25M over three years — $2-3M codification project + $18-22M treasury platform build
Expected return	208-260% over three years — $52M expected upside / $20-25M investment
Revenue, year 1	$3-5M incremental fee income from treasury SaaS pilot with 50 commercial accounts
Revenue, year 2	$8-12M incremental fee income from 200 commercial accounts plus commercial card float
Revenue, year 3	$15-18M incremental fee income from 400 commercial accounts at 23% fee-to-revenue ratio
Exit criteria	Abandon if treasury SaaS pilot fails to retain 80% of 50 pilot accounts by Month 18 OR if 71% loan-to-deposit overlap falls below 60% by Month 24

This is one move out of a full analysis. Read a complete report — every page, no email required.

What the engine does with this question

This question routes to Organizational Alignment Model, one of 29 engagements the platform runs. For banks and financial services firms it works through efficiency ratio, cost of funds, origination per banker and deposit concentration, then produces the sequence rather than a list of options — which move first, what it funds, and the observation that would say the sequence is wrong.

You watch the analysis get built before paying anything. Read a complete report here if you would rather see the depth first.

Questions people ask about this

How do I get buy-in for a strategy?

Change what people are measured on before asking them to behave differently. Buy-in follows the incentive far more reliably than it follows the explanation.

Is this a people problem?

Occasionally. Far more often it is a structure problem that looks like a people problem, which is worth testing first because replacing people does not fix a structure and is expensive to discover.

Should the plan be simplified?

Usually yes, but for capacity reasons rather than comprehension. A plan with three priorities that fit the capacity available beats one with twelve that do not.

Is this different in banks & financial services than in other industries?

Materially, yes. The branch network is simultaneously the deposit moat and the cost problem — and the relationship knowledge sits in six people close to retirement — which changes both the diagnosis and the order of the fixes. The metrics that decide it here are efficiency ratio, cost of funds, origination per banker, and an answer built on industry-general benchmarks will usually point at the wrong one first.

What data do I need before this analysis is worth running for a bank?

Less than most people expect. Your last twelve months of revenue and cost split the way you already split it, plus whatever you hold on efficiency ratio and cost of funds. The analysis is explicit about what it is assuming where your data stops, which is more useful than waiting for numbers you may never have.

When is Percision the wrong tool?

Percision is the wrong tool if you already know the answer and only need execution capacity, or if the business is pre-revenue — then the constraint is evidence about the market, not analysis of your own figures. Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library. Also wrong if you need facilitation, politics, or someone to sit with a lender or buyer. Those are human jobs.