Challenge

LBG's board faced a critical buy vs build decision in relation to its strategic response to the emerging developments in Open Banking capabilities. The strategic choice required understanding long-term market implications and technology risks, but the organisation was limited to 12-18 month planning horizons while the board needed 10-year strategic context for this major investment decision.

Approach

Initially the ask was for a set of Open Banking features that would be desirable in 5 years time, however we gathered senior stakeholders together to get under the skin of the real commercial challenge and through that workshop demonstrated some core and critical techniques we could use to better interrogate the future horizons to support the strategic decisions.

Mapping future trends and possible, preferable, potential futures we articulated a number of speculative services of the future that were aligned to group strategy for the bank's capabilities, the strengths of the brand and the competitive landscape as it was evolving. We articulated each of these future services as a blueprint and used this to compare to the current technology and operating roadmap. This back-casting from the future allowed us to identify critical gaps in the current roadmap which resulted in a clear recommendation for a buy not build approach.

Outcome

Strategic Decision De-risked

• Successfully supported board's buy vs. build decision through scenario planning

• Enabled informed strategic choice despite market uncertainty around open banking evolution

• Demonstrated how futures methodology could directly influence major corporate strategy

Methodology Validation

• Work receiving positive reception as effective approach for strategic decision-making

• Proved that scenario planning targeted at boards rather than operational teams can influence high-stakes strategic decisions in large financial institutions