In 2008, the economic crisis was starting to impact negatively on the income of the Cards Business Unit of our client, a major Spanish bank. Bad debt was growing month after month, the slowdown in consumption decreased the volume of transactions from which revenues are obtained via exchange rates and commissions, and most worryingly exchange rates in general had been constantly declining since 2005 due to regulatory pressure. The bank needed to urgently review its pricing structure and commissions, to identify opportunities for adjustment and optimization in the short term.

Firstly we performed a benchmark of market prices and commissions at a number of financial institutions in Spain and in other organizations, identifying opportunities and best practices. Then we developed a model that replicated exhaustively the income structure of the cards B.U. (at card-type level), and recommend and simulated the effect of 25 initiatives to increase revenues (14 price revisions, 2 migrations to more profitable products and 9 to develop new products / services)

Just with the 8 priority initiatives, we estimated a positive differential impact of € 36 million annually in revenues. During 2009, our client implemented a substantial number of our recommendations, which is showing, despite the deteriorating economic environment, in the improved performance with respect to their budgets and forecasts.