01
Company & competitor research
What the institution has told the market it intends to become: the stated strategic vision, the public commitments and targets it is held to, and the timeline attached to them. Read alongside the latest annual report for strategy and financials, strategy updates, investor commentary and analyst views, company news bearing on performance, and share price moves against the announcements that caused them.
Then the competitor set: who they actually compete with, how those peers are performing, and the trends running through the group, the sector and the geography.
AGENT
02
What the public record reveals about AI adoption, digital coverage across channels, journeys and products, how far processes are automated, and whether shared capabilities exist at all.
Maturity sets the starting line. The same lever is worth far more in an institution that has not begun than in one already three years in.
AGENT
03
The reported cost base is deconstructed across an L1 and L2 structure built for the archetype — universal bank, insurer, asset manager, specialist lender — using sector benchmarks and the segments the institution actually operates in.
You see the allocation against peer medians, adjust any split you disagree with, change the archetype if it is wrong, and confirm before anything is sized.
CHECKPOINT
04
Every lever in the library targets a specific cost pool and carries its own savings method and input assumptions. Those assumptions are recalibrated for this institution from direct and indirect benchmarks, with the reasoning attached to each one.
Levers are presented against the pools they hit, with a recommendation and the argument behind it.
You interrogate any assumption, move it, and choose which levers stay in.
CHECKPOINT
05
Each lever carries an implementation timeline. The default order is value in shortest time, plotted across a five-year horizon with the resulting cost-to-income ratio computed as you go.
Switch the logic to suit the situation: biggest bets first for absolute value, de-risked for certainty, or capital efficiency by saving per pound invested. The roadmap and the CIR recompute against the choice.
CHECKPOINT
06
Investment & run cost sizing
Benefit without cost is not a case. Each lever's build investment and ongoing run cost are calibrated from benchmarks the same way the savings were, then set beside the benefit already sized.
T-shirt sized, adjustable, and traceable back to the sources behind them.
CHECKPOINT
07
The agent switches sides and reads the proposal as the client sponsor would. Is it ambitious enough against the stated vision and commitments? Is the investment weighted where the strategy says it should be? Is the return attractive, and if not, what has to change? Are the timelines credible? What has been missed, and what is simply wrong?
What comes back is a list of recommendations. You accept or reject each one, then the proposal is final.
CHECKPOINT