FINANCIAL SERVICES

Financial services firms are confronting an unprecedented array of strategic challenges from both within and outside the industry. Shifts in consumer behavior and evolving financial needs, driven by demographic changes, social transformation, and widespread adoption of new technologies, are reshaping the landscape. The rapid growth in data availability and analytics capabilities is enabling a move away from product-centric models toward more customer-centric approaches. Traditional business models are being disrupted not only by these forces but also by the rise of innovative fintech players.

Political developments such as Brexit, alongside new and existing restrictions on international capital flows, are altering the natural progression of global markets and reshaping how international firms operate across borders. Additionally, regulatory environments are becoming increasingly proactive and detailed across many jurisdictions.

More than a decade after the global financial crisis, the sector continues to grapple with its aftermath, including historically low-interest rates and persistent trust deficits toward major traditional financial brands. These factors compel established institutions to strategically evaluate investment priorities and explore new avenues for growth. Simultaneously, they create fertile ground for disruptors offering fresh ethos and innovative approaches to delivering financial products and services.

The market and regulatory landscape for retail and commercial banks continue to present a complex mix of strategic opportunities and threats. In the post-financial crisis era, large banks have had to address legacy issues, strengthen their balance sheets, and bear the costs of new regulations—particularly tighter prudential rules around capital adequacy—while navigating a prolonged low-interest-rate environment. While these challenges remain relevant, the focus has now shifted to adapting to the era of “open banking,” leveraging big data, and making significant technology investments to compete with agile challenger banks and fintech innovators.

Challenger banks face their own strategic decisions, mainly around:

• Where to play against larger institutions to capture attractive returns
   
• How to win by developing compelling, often tech-enabled propositions
   
• How to configure their business models, including optimal routes to market
   

Across the sector, banks of all sizes grapple with evolving consumer behaviors—marked by increased preference for digital financial management, low overall customer engagement, and declining trust in major brands.

TNG helps financial institutions of all sizes navigate this dynamic environment to achieve tangible growth and enhance shareholder value.

Our banking clients range from large financial institutions to smaller banks, brokers and intermediaries, and providers of essential services such as staffing, regulatory compliance, and technology solutions.

We bring deep expertise in the key challenges and value drivers in banking to:

• Provide certainty about participation strategies: Clients rely on us to navigate uncertainty through tailored assessments of where to compete—whether geographically, across value chains, customer segments, or product categories. Our work answers critical, client-specific questions like:
   
  • What are the most attractive and sustainable niches in SME lending?
     
  • Should we expand our direct mortgage proposition?
     
  • How can we differentiate our current account offering?
     
  • What is the real impact of fintech disruption, and how should we respond?
     
• Help clients win: Our distinctive, value-driven analytical approach complements our deep sector knowledge. We support clients in growing market share by optimizing routes to market, improving pricing strategies, enhancing customer origination and retention, strengthening product propositions, and refining competitive positioning. Investors especially value our ability to uncover growth levers and unlock potential in banking businesses within their portfolios.
   
• Bring strategies to life: We assist clients in aligning their business operations and people around shared objectives. Our work includes defining and implementing target operating models, advising on the role of technology, developing aligned incentive mechanisms for front-line staff, and identifying opportunities to enhance performance as business models evolve.

Debt Management Overview

Debt management—including debt purchase and debt servicing—has evolved into a vital service industry for companies offering unsecured credit to consumers, such as lenders, telecom providers, utilities, insurers, eCommerce businesses, and publishers. More recently, debt sales have expanded into other asset classes, including secured lending, SME loans, and commercial credit.

While debt management markets remain largely domestic due to country-specific regulations and vendor practices, cross-border consolidation has created a quasi-European market. Leading providers now operate across multiple countries, increasingly competing for the same investment opportunities. The industry is well-established and recognized by capital markets, with major European players financing themselves through public listings and bonds, significantly reducing funding costs.

At the operational level, providers leverage data warehouses, advanced pricing tools, and analytics to maximize recovery rates and optimize efficiency. This, combined with aggressive growth ambitions, has fostered “sellers’ markets” across Europe—characterized by declining profitability, tight pricing, and intense competition for portfolios across all asset classes (unsecured, secured, and commercial).

How We Support

In this challenging environment, both domestic and multi-country providers face vital strategic and operational decisions to:

• Achieve strategic objectives
   
• Maximize stakeholder value
   
• Create attractive investment opportunities
   
• Position for the emerging “end game” in European debt management
   

TNG partners with clients to provide independent, empirical, and fact-based insights. Our trusted, rigorous approach has supported management teams and investors in debt management for over 15 years, giving us unrivaled expertise in European market trends, debt flow, regulation, and competitive dynamics.

Key Questions We Address

• Is our current strategic position sustainable in this fast-evolving, competitive European market? What operational and strategic actions are needed to meet shareholder, management, and staff goals in the short and medium term?
   
• In which countries— including emerging markets—should we operate, and which services should we prioritize (e.g., debt purchase vs. servicing)?
   
• Which end markets should we focus on—financial services, utilities, or others?
   
• What asset classes should we serve—unsecured consumer debt, secured consumer debt, SME loans, or commercial debt?
   
• What IT systems, operational capabilities, and back-office infrastructure are necessary to meet creditor and debtor expectations effectively?

Wealth Management, Investment Management, and Life Insurance: Navigating Seismic Change

The wealth management, investment management, and life insurance sectors across the Western world are undergoing profound transformation. This shift is driven by the retirement of the baby boomer generation—the wealthiest cohort to date—and evolving regulatory landscapes, including RDR and pension freedoms in the U.K., MiFID II and Solvency II across Europe, and the Fiduciary Rule in the U.S. These changes are reshaping permissible business models, distribution channels, and service offerings.

These dynamics create significant opportunities for our clients to embrace disruption and make step changes in participation within one of financial services’ most attractive sectors. Clients are also exploring growth avenues in pensions—both defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC)—targeting retired populations, as well as technology-enabled “Robo” solutions tailored to millennials. TNG provides clarity and strategic guidance to help clients build sustainable business models and achieve profitable growth.

How We Support

TNG partners with a broad range of participants across the investment and life insurance value chains, including discretionary wealth managers, financial advisory firms (IFAs, RIAs), investment platforms (B2B and B2C), life insurers (open and closed books), asset managers, and funeral plan providers. Our clients also include key service providers such as trust services, pension administrators, tax-efficient wrap providers, technology vendors, and actuarial consultancies. Our reach extends internationally, offering comprehensive sector expertise.

Our experienced team combines deep market insight with a holistic understanding of the industry’s business challenges and value drivers. We work closely with senior leadership, boards, and investors to:

• Develop Organic Growth Strategies: We help clients craft future-proof business models to win new clients and gain market share. Our analysis addresses questions such as: Which customer segments should we target? How should our routes to market evolve under new regulations? Should we pursue vertical integration? How can we sustain organic growth? What are the competitive dynamics and emerging winners and losers in product innovation?
   
• Develop and Execute Inorganic Growth Strategies: We support corporate and private equity clients throughout the investment lifecycle—from framing investment theses and performing commercial due diligence to assessing synergies, creating value enhancement plans, and preparing portfolio companies for successful exits.
   
• Optimize Businesses for Success: We assist clients in maximizing business value through actionable customer segmentation, proposition design, pricing strategy reviews, cost-to-serve optimization, and leveraging technology for operational improvement. Our fact-based, data-driven approach uncovers unique value opportunities often overlooked in wealth management.

High street banks often decline lending to certain retail or business customers due to various reasons. In the near-prime and subprime sectors, these include poor or absent credit history, insufficient income, and over-indebtedness. For nonstandard prime lending, challenges arise from complex borrower circumstances such as multiple income sources, volatile earnings, unconventional assets as security, and other factors that complicate underwriting beyond typical standards.

These lending needs are met by specialist or nonstandard lenders equipped with the skills, expertise, and bespoke processes necessary to assess risk profitably over economic cycles. They leverage additional data sources and tailored underwriting approaches to manage these complexities effectively.

Specialist lenders face several tactical and strategic challenges, including:

• Changing customer behaviors that demand more personalized and flexible lending solutions.
   
• Emerging technologies and data sources, including early adoption of big data analytics.
   
• Increasingly interventionist, customer-focused regulation, shaping how risk and customer relationships are managed.
   
• Substantial new capital inflows and investments, intensifying competition and compressing margins.
   
• Banks expanding risk appetite, re-entering or entering markets once dominated by specialist lenders.
   
• The looming potential for an economic downturn after a long positive macroeconomic period, especially impacting newer lenders without a through-the-cycle track record.
   

These evolving conditions present both risks and opportunities for lenders and investors.

TNG provides a full suite of strategic and transaction advisory services tailored to the specialist lending sector:

• Strategy Review and Development:
  We assist clients in reviewing, refining, or formulating corporate or business unit strategies—from high-level goal setting, vision and mission definition, and risk appetite determination to “where to play” decisions across sectors, geographies, value chain stages (e.g., broking vs. underwriting), customer segments, and channels.
   
• New Market Entry and Product Development:
  Our expertise helps clients expand into new geographic and market segments—across mature and emerging markets, consumer and business/commercial sectors, mainstream and niche products, direct and intermediated distribution, and new innovative markets fueled by rapid financial services change. We base market-ready solutions on deep customer segmentation and pricing analysis, supporting long-term growth and value creation.
   
• Value-Creating Transaction Support:
  We guide clients through the entire deal lifecycle—from evaluation to execution and integration—acting on both buy-side and sell-side roles. We develop innovative investment theses grounded in a thorough understanding of market dynamics, customer preferences, and asset-specific differentiators.
   
• Operations and Configuration Optimization:
  We collaborate closely with clients to optimize processes, operational efficiency, and organizational design across the specialist lending value chain. Areas of focus include enhancing commercial effectiveness, aligning incentives, and designing operating models that enable the transition from strategy to practical success. Our interventions have driven productivity gains and contributed to both top-line and bottom-line growth across diverse specialist lending subsegments.

The property and casualty (P&C) insurance sector continues to confront profound transformation driven by technology advancements, evolving regulations, structural overcapacity, and challenging investment returns. Across mass-market and niche segments, as well as personal, commercial, and specialist lines, industry participants throughout the insurance value chain face complex pressures — from existential threats to digital transformation initiatives, shifting consumer behaviors, evolving distribution models, industry consolidation, heightened regulatory scrutiny, changing participation choices along the value chain, and an intensified focus on customer-centricity.

In this challenging environment, clients rely on TNG to provide clarity and strategic guidance as they pursue sustainable growth and build resilient businesses.

Our expertise spans the full insurance value chain, including brokers and agents, managing general agents (MGAs), insurers, reinsurers, claims management firms, and technology and distribution platforms. Our client base ranges from small regional insurers to the largest global P&C companies.

Leveraging deep sector knowledge and a holistic perspective, we partner with senior leadership teams, boards, and investors to:

• Provide Certainty on Participation Strategies:

We help clients navigate uncertainty with tailored assessments of where to play and grow — geographically, within the value chain, across customer segments, or across product categories. The strategic questions we address are customized to each client’s unique context, covering areas such as:
 

• “What should our product portfolio look like, and should we remain in the personal lines motor market?”
   
• “Where must we be located to safeguard origination and drive growth?”
   
• “Should we adopt a multiniche approach or focus on mass-market segments?”
   
• “Who will be the winners and losers as the industry evolves, and what does that mean for our value chain participation and business strategy?”
   
• Help Clients Win and Grow:

Clients value our distinctive, data-driven analytical approach combined with our deep sector expertise. We help them enhance competitive positioning and grow market share in often low-growth insurance markets by:
 

• Optimizing distribution strategies
   
• Improving pricing, customer origination, and retention capabilities
   
• Creating or refining product offerings and propositions
  Investors especially rely on us to identify growth levers and unlock hidden potential within insurance businesses and portfolio companies.
   
• Bring Strategies to Life:

We provide pragmatic support in aligning organizations and people toward shared goals. Our engagements often include:
 

• Designing and implementing target operating models
   
• Advising on technology’s evolving role within insurance businesses
   
• Developing and aligning incentive mechanisms for brokers and sales teams
   
• Identifying and unlocking performance improvement opportunities as business models transform
   

As the global economy shifts from cash to electronic payments, constant innovation is creating increasingly seamless ways for consumers and businesses to transact. While cash remains resilient in developed markets and vibrant in many developing economies, businesses with significant cash exposure are actively seeking scale and efficiency improvements. Meanwhile, players across the electronic payments value chain continuously evaluate growth opportunities and strive to boost profitability in an ever more competitive environment.

TNG has supported payments companies of all sizes to successfully navigate this complex landscape, delivering tangible growth and enhanced shareholder returns. We also assist investors in understanding this technically and commercially intricate sector.

Our expertise spans the full payments ecosystem, including:

• Transaction types: consumer remittances, consumer retail payments (point-of-sale and eCommerce), and B2B payments
   
• Means of payment: cash, card payments, and alternative payment methods
   
• Value chain roles: acquirers, payment gateways, and value-added service providers in electronic payments
   

With deep sector knowledge, our team helps clients address the key challenges and identify critical value levers to:

• Provide Certainty on Participation Strategies:

We offer bespoke insights on where to compete and grow — whether by geography, value chain segment, customer group, or product category. Questions we address include:
 

• “What new payment areas should we explore based on market opportunities and our capabilities?”
   
• “How can we differentiate our international payments offerings?”
   
• “What is the future role of cash, and how should we adapt our business accordingly?”
   
• Help Clients Win and Grow:

Leveraging a distinctive, value-driven analytical approach, we support clients in optimizing routes to market, enhancing pricing and customer acquisition or retention, refining product propositions, and strengthening competitive positioning to gain market share.
Investors especially rely on our expertise to identify growth levers within payments businesses and to help realize that potential in their portfolios.
 

• Bring Strategies to Life:
  We assist clients in translating strategy into execution by aligning organizations around common goals. Our work typically includes defining and implementing target operating models, developing and aligning incentive schemes for front-line sales teams, and unlocking performance improvements as business models evolve.