The Connected Bank is working agile

The VUCA-environment banks operate in nowadays (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) requires rapid responses to changing customer needs and market circumstances. This is demanding to employees, but first of all to organizations: they have to be set up in a way that facilitates flexibility and autonomy. Therefore, the agile way of working is a dominant characteristic of the Connected Bank.

Empowering the workforce is one of the most important capabilities that banks must invest in to become Connected. The agile way of working has exactly that empowering effect. It gives employees the autonomy to respond quickly and adequately to change. So, the first thing to strive for is creating an organizational structure to make agile working possible.

Secondly, effectiveness increases if the complete workforce is performing in a consistent (agile) way of working. The agile way of working differs fundamentally from the classic waterfall method for project management. If both methods are used interchangeably, this will always require a great deal of (extra) coordinating attention at management level. So, to ensure effectiveness, it is vital that all parts will work agile.

KPMG supports each and every part of an organization to become more connected by transforming to the agile way of working. This includes departments which might not come to mind first like Internal Audit in banking.

Together with Rabobank we applied our knowledge and experience in this area to introduce the agile way of working to Audit Rabobank. Interested in how Rabobank embarked this journey?

Here you can read more about this example.