Cedar on Banking
Cedar on Banking provides strategic perspectives on the business of banking in a changing global environment. The channel covers operating models, regulatory dynamics, risk, growth strategies, and transformation initiatives across retail, corporate, and wholesale banking. Each episode offers practical insights to help banks strengthen performance, adapt to disruption, and sustain long-term value.
Episodes
36 episodes
Staying Operational: A BankTech Playbook for Uncertain Times
In the face of rising geopolitical risks, banking technology is experiencing unprecedented pressure. In this CedarView Podcast episode, we unlock how banks must adjust their technology strategies to maintain operations and mitigate new risks, i...
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Navigating Uncertainties: Strategic Bank Playbook
In this episode, we explore how geopolitical tensions in West Asia are reshaping the operating environment for banks across the region. Energy shocks, trade disruptions, and rising logistics costs are already affecting liquidity, funding, and c...
The Middle East banking industry
Sanjiv Anand, Chairman, Cedar Management Consulting InternationalDespite being perceived as over-banked, the Middle East banking market offers significant growth opportunities across seg...
Driving innovations in Islamic banking
Islamic banking’s next growth phase will be driven by differentiation and innovation, not just Shariah compliance. Over the past five years, global Islamic banking assets grew 11% versus 7% for conventional banks, with expansion extending beyon...
Global omnichannel opportunities and challenges in retail and corporate banking
Omnichannel banking is a cross-channel strategy that delivers a seamless, consistent customer experience across physical and digital touchpoints, improving service quality while reducing costs and boosting profitability. Unlike multichannel mod...
Is your bank getting the most from its credit card business?
Many banks fail to fully realise the potential of their credit card businesses because they overlook fundamentals while chasing best practices or technology upgrades. Experience across mature and developing markets shows that poor execution—suc...
Trends in treasury management systems
Treasury has evolved from a back-office role into a strategic, value-adding function as banks face complex investment products, tighter regulations and changing business models. Beyond managing liquidity and returns, treasury is now expected to...
From cost centre to strategic force
Post-2008 regulations, evolving markets, and new technologies have fundamentally reshaped treasury functions. Heightened focus on liquidity, capital, and risk driven by Basel norms has made liquidity costlier and elevated the treasurer’s role f...
Core banking implementation: changing engines at 30,000 feet
Core banking transformation is often compared to changing an aircraft engine mid-flight, as banks must replace their core systems without disrupting live operations or customer experience. Successful implementation depends on disciplined execut...
Time to get your SWIFT related operational risk under control
Recent large-scale frauds linked to SWIFT transactions highlight hidden operational vulnerabilities in banks and the urgent need for stronger risk controls. SWIFT is a global messaging platform used by banks to facilitate cross-border payments,...
Regional trends in Islamic banking
Islamic finance has gained global attention for its risk-sharing, ethical principles, especially after recent financial crises. Islamic banking operates through pure Islamic banks, Islamic subsidiaries of conventional banks, and Islamic windows...
4D approach to selecting the right Islamic banking system
Selecting an Islamic core banking system is more complex than choosing a conventional platform due to Sharia-specific requirements and regional variations. A structured “4D approach” helps banks identify the best fit.First, Define needs ...
Five pillars of SME credit
SMEs are vital to the global economy but remain underserved in bank lending due to the unique nature of their credit risk. Unlike large corporates, SME risk is primarily promoter-driven, making traditional corporate credit frameworks ineffectiv...
Challenges in international private equity
Turbulence in U.S. credit markets is expected to reduce the size and number of private equity (PE) deals in developed economies, as debt for leveraged buyouts becomes scarcer. Despite this, PE continues to face a surplus of capital chasing fewe...
Three imperatives to manage the cost of compliance
Rising regulatory scrutiny has made compliance costs a major challenge for banks, with global fines exceeding €211 billion since the financial crisis and regulations continuing to expand. Banks must balance shareholder expectations with stricte...
What to look out for in corporate and global transaction banking
Corporate banks face shrinking margins from global slowdown, trade tensions, and rising risk costs, making digital transaction banking a key growth lever. Digitizing corporate transactions reduces cost per transaction while improving speed, acc...
Get ready for the new era of open banking
Open Banking, driven by PSD2, is transforming banking from a closed, protected model into an open, platform-based ecosystem where customer data is shared securely with third-party providers via APIs. This shift creates both disruption and oppor...
10 essentials for a successful cost reduction and process improvement program
Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) is the only approach that can deliver rapid, dramatic, and lasting performance improvements, but success depends on strategic execution. Effective BPR starts with a holistic, customer-backward view of the e...
Defining and adopting an IT Scorecard
Banks face five core IT challenges: making IT strategically relevant and customer-centric, improving returns on IT spend, enabling next-generation banking, aligning applications and infrastructure with enterprise vision, and building strong IT ...
Developing a bank's Scorecard
Banks often assess performance mainly through financial results, which are lag indicators and do not reflect long-term sustainability. A balanced scorecard for banks must therefore integrate financial and non-financial objectives across four pe...
Banks and alternative lenders - to compete or collaborate
Alternative and peer-to-peer (P2P) lending has matured into a permanent part of the financial ecosystem, with the market projected to exceed $70 billion. Growth has been strongest in SME lending, driven by digital players using advanced analyti...
The Black Swan opportunity
Sanjiv Anand, Chairman, Cedar Management Consulting InternationalThe Covid-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges for banks, severely impacting profitability, asset quality, li...
Customer segmentation - key for an effective HNI strategy
Modern banking success depends not just on customer segmentation but on delivering differentiated, high-quality experiences. Traditional segmentation by wealth or income Mass Retail, Affluent, HNI and Ultra HNI remains relevant, but banks are i...
