How Organisational Culture Can Remedy Operational and Governance Challenges

When the global financial crisis took hold in 2008 leaving a reputationally and financially bereft banking sector in its wake and a flood of negative commentary, political opinion, public outrage and years of recovery ahead, the blame pointed in many directions. It was the rogue traders, the careless bankers, the poor incentive structures, the boards of directors and senior executives who didn’t have their eyes sufficiently on the ball. It was the under-invested risk management systems, the inadequate and understaffed compliance functions, the out-of-date regulations, and the poor or lacking supervision by regulators. There was too little capital and liquidity on bank balance sheets, too much interconnectedness in the global system, an overly inflated credit market, an inadequate understanding of market risk. The list went on and on…

Were banks too big to manage if no longer too big to fail?