Our clients are all facing an agenda of significant regulatory change.
For banks their prime concern is increasing capital and liquidity to meet the requirements of Basel III and ring fencing higher risk operations. Insurers face a similar challenge with Solvency II, while the investment sector is also preparing for new regulation.
Demand for our advice and services has been strong, with net sales increasing by 7% on prior year, and growth across all our functions apart from Transactions & Restructuring.
KPMG’s European Financial Regulation Centre of Excellence in London, supported by similar centres in Hong Kong and New York, is currently the focus for much of our work. We dedicated several senior partners to ensuring that our regulatory insights were leading edge to ensure that we were able to provide quality, timely advice to the senior executive teams of our clients.
Broad confidence that the economy was on the road to recovery this time last year has been undermined by the sovereign debt crisis and banks find themselves facing turbulent times once again. The immediate outlook is challenging.
But part of our job is to help clients look beyond the present crisis to life 18 months ahead and to plan sustainable five- and ten-year strategies. We continue to help them build long-term growth and profitability, focusing on issues such as cost reduction, branch productivity, technology optimisation and customer retention.
There are four pillars to our global growth strategy in FS. The first is ensuring we deliver world-class regulatory advice. The second is bringing our multi-disciplinary skills to bear most effectively on transformational projects for key global clients. The third focuses on high-growth markets and new customer groups, while the fourth is about developing our FS Audit proposition and market share.
*Growth rate figures in the 'Markets' sections are for ELLP firms at 30 September 2011, ignoring the impact of mergers and exchange rate fluctuations (see note 3)