Banking

June 2022

Anne Boden at Starling Bank: Disrupting an industry

By Herminia Ibarra, Luisa Alemany, Nick Mickshik, Ken Mark

The case describes the start-up and evolution of UK-based digital bank Starling. Founded in 2014, Starling offered personal and business accounts, and lending products, promising a better customer-service experience, faster approvals and a more digital-friendly approach than traditional banks. By 20...

September 2021

The fall of Greensill and the future of supply chain finance

By S. Alex Yang, Lisa Duke

In March 2021, Greensill Capital, the UK-based leading supply chain financing provider, with 16 offices across the world, filed for insolvency; its Germany-based bank closed by regulators. Less than two years earlier, Greensill had received a $1.5 billion investment from SoftBank’s Vision Fund, va...

January 2021

Building an Agile Organisation at ING Bank Netherlands – Compact Case

By Julian Birkinshaw, Ken Mark

ING Group was established through a merger of three Dutch financial services firms in 1991. It expanded internationally into Europe and the Americas, and created a no-frills savings account business called ING Direct in the late 1990s. In 2007 it merged its two main subsidiary banks, Postbank with ...

September 2016

ING Bank: Creating an Agile Organisation

By Julian Birkinshaw, Scott Duncan

Set in 2016, this case describes ING Bank’s implementation of a radical new way of working using agile principles. ING’s agile way of working has been written up in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review and McKinsey Quarterly. This case provides a detailed account of how the new struc...

January 2018

Commercial International Bank: Leading Transformation in Turbulent Times Empowering People, Winning With Data

By Randall Peterson

In 2011, Cairo became the cradle of the Egyptian revolution. Transport workers, ambulance drivers and bank employees called for the end of President Hosni Mubarak's regime. With a backdrop of volatility, Commercial International Bank (CIB), Egypt's leading private bank, embarked on a major transform...

May 2017

Capitec Bank – Redefining Retail Banking: Innovation Through Elimination

By Freek Vermeulen

The consumer banking industry is notoriously hard to enter. Customers rarely switch banks (switching costs are high) and there are considerable barriers to entry to new players. Traditionally, banking products can be complex, often accompanied by non-transparent cross-selling practices and hidden fe...