Embrace Change. Act Quickly.

Today’s environment places unprecedented pressure on financial institutions to act quickly when they recognize good acquisition opportunities. In addition to determining the financial opportunities and risks, institutions must assess and understand the operational challenges of consolidating organizations following a transaction.

Financial institution acquisitions are complex and require adequate time, effort, and resources to deliver the desired outcome. The multitude of detailed and interrelated acquisition activities can easily overburden staff or, at the very least, present organizations with challenges because these activities occur so infrequently and are therefore unfamiliar. Successful transactions begin with identifying and anticipating the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. 

Maximize your opportunity. Choose the right partner.

The ideal partner is one who has completed the process before, preferably multiple times. West Monroe’s Banking practice applies substantial experience gained through hundreds of transactions and integration programs, helping the acquiring bank understand and plan for the critical steps involved, assuring the transaction will deliver the anticipated benefits. Our consultants, most of which are former banking industry professionals, are experienced in every step of the M&A cycle:

Target Selection

• Define selection criteria
• Identify potential target candidates
• Develop and execute the approach strategy

Due Diligence 

• Establish integration and operations due diligence team
• Evaluation of strategic alignment
• Perform due diligence
• Define integration budget

Conversion Planning 

• Establish integration timeline and milestones
• Launch Integration management office (IMO)
• Define leadership team and interim organization design
• Product mapping
• Loan documentation review
• Loan operations planning
• Deposit-operations planning (including cards, ATMs)
• Data mapping
• Conduct asset inventory
• Facilities planning
• Employee training schedule/programs
• Systems consolidation and conversion planning
• Disaster recovery
• Marketing/branding/merchandising
• Channel conversion planning
• Customer impact analysis
• Risk mitigation planning
• Conversion weekend plan development, hour by hour

Execution and Stabilization

• Conduct conversion simulation
• Initiate training
• Perform final acceptance testing
• Execute go-live plan
• Carry out post-conversion clean up
• Initiate steady-state plan
• Conduct resource skills assessment
• Execute risk mitigation/stabilization plan
• Deploy new front/back-office processes

Integration / Steady State Synergy Capture 

• Evaluate short, medium and long term synergies
• Perform process evaluation to identify and retain the best elements of legacy organizations
• Identify process weaknesses in the newly combined organization and develop a risk weighted strategy to improve these functions
• Complete long term strategic review, formulate new corporate strategy and design new business and operating models which best leverage the strengths of the combined organization

Our approach provides assistance with both traditional and FDIC-assisted acquisitions, and leverages our proprietary 159 page M&A playbook, which includes 79 pages of planning templates to support the following key activities:

• Conducting an acquisition
• Integrating banking operations
• Converting systems
• Optimizing the value of transactions
• Capturing maximum value post-merger

National experience. Global Reach.

Our six offices across North America, combined with our BearingPoint Europe Strategic Alliance, allows West Monroe to deliver timely, expert guidance nationally and globally. Take a moment to learn more about our M&A Playbook.  Or, if you would like to request a copy of the Playbook, simply click here.