Project Experience

Financial services…Information technology (IT) capabilities can provide emerging competitors with an immediate advantage in your market niche.

Client Situation
When assessing competitive threats, it is critical to look beyond your traditional competitor set. One key question: what companies not yet in your market space have the technology in place to compete with you? While "traditional" financial services firms have been focused on migrating existing customers to the Web, many have overlooked the threat represented by Internet-only firms, often based on a broader financial services portal model, who have been focused on new customer acquisition.

Fuld Approach
A leading brokerage firm asked us to identify, score and rank 15 existing and potential competitors based on their current and future IT capabilities.

Benefits and Implications
We found that numerous firms that were not yet on our client's radar screen had the technology in place to represent a formidable threat to our client's business. Our report card revealed the IT areas where competitors were strongest and our client, by extension, was most vulnerable to attack. By committing resources to these areas, our client was able to fend off these emerging threats. For more information on assessing the IT capabilities of competitors in financial or business-to-business services, please contactlscanlon@fuld.com.