Category: Financial Services

Lean Six Sigma can assist organizations determine which processes are the best candidates for automation as well as make those processes more automation ready.

In only three years, Edward Jones has realized more than a million dollars in cost avoidance through the use of bots combined with LSS.

Post the subprime mortgage crisis, the growth of the financial services market has become stagnant; companies are reeling under immense pressures to sustain their profit margins. It has become imperative for the financial services sector to reduce operational costs by improving operational efficiencies and effectiveness. Financial services businesses can improve by elevating their quality of […]

The recent spate of events such as rogue trading losses, flash trades and a seeming outbreak of Ponzi schemes has made many in financial services wary about their existing risk management practices. In post-financial crisis times, financial services companies are already under pressure to cut their operational costs while also being expected to comply with […]

According to George Wilbanks, managing director of Russell Reynolds’ Asset and Wealth Management practice, many investment firms are looking especially hard for technology executives who have some kind of training in continuous improvement. “In the last two years, with so much volatility we’ve had in the markets, they’ve been asking for Six Sigma qualifications,” he […]

In finance departments, focusing Six Sigma efforts on cost savings can be a recipe for failure. The way to be successful is to focus on the areas in which employees perceive more value – risk mitigation, metric development, controls, gap analysis and assessments. This was the message of “Delivering Value in Corporate Finance”, a breakout […]

How many times have you heard the saying, “Work will expand to fit the time available”? Even in industries where capacity expands and contracts depending on how much work there is to do, teams can still appear to be working hard all of the time. In value stream mapping exercises, Lean Six Sigma practitioners often […]

Standard Bank Group – one of the largest financial institutions in South Africa, with more than 1.33 trillion rand (R) (US$200 billion) – recently released a case study about how it deployed Lean Six Sigma methods to reduce waste and errors, and also created a balanced scorecard system to track its progress. As a result […]

A quality leader at a financial institution is deploying an Operational Excellence program across his organization that already has a project management office (PMO) in place. Recently he asked iSixSigma’s Discussion Forum about the pros and cons of using a PMO to manage project selection. Readers responded with very pro-PMO advice about how these structures […]

Through scenario planning, organizations can delight their customers by preparing for problems before they happen and testing solutions on employees first.

Australian financial services firm Westpac has launched a large-scale initiative to overhaul its information technology (IT) services, part of which will be accomplished through the application of Lean and Six Sigma techniques to reduce waste and remove unnecessary banking processes. The IT plan was announced during an Oct. 8 webcast briefing with Westpac investors. During […]

Lean Six Sigma remains a popular and effective tool to improve efficiency in financial services operations. However, many financial institutions are finding that identifying and reducing incremental defect variability does not fully maximize the full spectrum of improvement opportunities. To achieve a larger return on investment, many organizations are turning to Design for Six Sigma […]

One of the initial challenges of enhancing IT quality metrics is to manage the mountain of data produced at a typical organization. Those organizations that have not learned how to mine their existing information to find solutions tend to track their data via spreadsheets and then generate high-level reports for executive management. Often, major gaps […]

Considering the performance of the stock market over the past few years combined with current economic conditions, many financial institutions are analyzing their processes for improvements. Unfortunately, the majority of process improvement tools available to Six Sigma practitioners – such as cause-and-effect diagrams, Pareto charts, histograms and scatter plots – have been used for analyzing […]

Let’s face it – without meaningful data there cannot be meaningful data analysis. Data is typically collected as a basis for measuring success and, ultimately, taking action. However, unless data is viewed realistically – separating opportune signals from probable noise – the actions taken may be inconsistent with the data collected in the first place. […]

Last year, business process outsourcing firm Firstsource, based in Mumbai, India, was one of the participants in the iSixSigma Live! Summit & Awards program in the Most Successful Start-up category. Recently, iSixSigma caught up with Chandeep Singh, Executive Vice President, Process Excellence and Workforce Management, at Firstsource to discuss some of the recent accomplishments of […]

Any change to a process is only successful in the long run if the stakeholders truly adopt and sustain the change. Process and technology improvements cannot be implemented without a change in the hearts, minds and behaviors of the people involved in the change. True adoption and sustainability requires thoughtful planning and focus, which should […]

The bank in the following case study had been encountering problems with new customer accounts. The account setup cycle time was quite high because the information-gathering process was ad hoc. It typically took several attempts to collect all the needed specifications from customers. This was causing customer dissatisfaction and, in some cases, defective accounts. The […]

Based on experience with property and casualty insurers (P&C), one of the biggest profitability drivers is the expense incurred staffing and settling claims. Many P&C insurers struggle with timely and efficient claims processing. In working with P&C companies consulting groups found three common challenges that project teams must address to improve the overall claims settlement […]

A Black Belt used Six Sigma to improve a transactional bank deposit process, resulting in yearly savings of $4 million.

For Six Sigma to succeed in a financial services organization, the deployment team and the business need to be able to measure the benefit of the projects. This should occur from both a financial and operational effectiveness perspective.

Lean Six Sigma can be overwhelming to an organization if implemented without regard for an organization’s change management history, culture and readiness. That said, the starting point for Lean Six Sigma – as well as any organized approach to effecting change that both enhances customer experience and impacts profitability – is actually having a strategy that includes […]

Recently, a large-scale financial services company recently wanted to reengineer the process for its entire customer services organization, including people, process and technology. This company had, during the last two years, trained many Black Belts and Green Belts. It attempted to use Six Sigma methodology as the primary method of introducing customer-focused process improvement to […]

In the 1990s, the teller counter was the primary customer-facing area in the financial service industry, and so improvement efforts were leveraged in this arena. With increased improvements in technology and online banking utilization, however, process improvement efforts have shifted to internal areas. Yet companies must realize that even though customers are becoming more self-reliant […]