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How financial services leaders are eager to increase M&A despite regulatory barriers.

Financial services executives in Asia today face growing pressure to satisfy shareholders, please customers, and capitalise on their successes. With falling barriers, the threat of new competition continues to escalate, and prudent executives have no choice but to maintain a constant surveillance of new market trends and growth opportunities. Based on the results of our survey, successful financial services executives may need to take into account a number of challenges.

First of all, they must be prepared for larger, more aggressive M&A, joint venture and partnership deals. To remain competitive, financial services executives must place a high priority on knowing their fellow market players, the institution they compete against today could well become their strategic partner, or even new owner, tomorrow.

Financial service providers have an obligation to foresee the risks and opportunities associated with different restructuring scenarios. Those who succeed will be the ones that enumerate all feasible scenarios, identify the potential outcomes and quantify their financial impact, in an effort to serve all constituents.

Second, executives need to know their company's strengths, and apply M&A to hone competitive edge. It is imperative that financial service providers stick to their strengths. The firms whose leaders possess a profound understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses, and can thus build on these strengths using M&A and other forms of restructuring, will be those that thrive.

The third challenge for financial service executives is to outsource back-office and other non-strategic operations. Respondents to our survey showed an acute awareness of the opportunities to outsource IT, accounting and other operations that offer little to no customer-facing attributes. Again, a true understanding of core competencies is critical to identifying which of these operations can effectively be outsourced.

Fourth, executives need to pursue M&A strategies despite regulatory uncertainty, not because of it. It makes little sense to allow regulatory issues to dictate M&A strategy.

Financial institutions would do better to identify areas of growth that will be critical to their company's long-term success, and use these as the foundation of a restructuring strategy. As the survey shows, senior executives increasingly view regulatory and policy regimes as mutable, and therefore transitory.

The fifth challenge is to stay vigilant for operational efficiencies and opportunities for scale. Through every stage of restructuring, from feasibility studies to negotiations and implementation, there is a certain virtue in ruthlessness wherever operations can be combined and consolidated.

However, among the obstacles to increased M&A activity cited by respondents were differences in corporate culture and defensiveness by owners or managers or the acquired firm. Nevertheless, the achievement of scale should be a central consideration in every deliberation.

Finally, financial services executives should ensure that proper risk management is in place. With regulatory hurdles still in place, financial institutions embarking on M&A in Asia are in many cases buying an interest in future high growth. But there are risks associated with this strategy. Expected economic growth may be blunted by any number of global shocks. If financial institutions overestimate growth prospects, they are at risk of overpaying for acquisitions.

By meeting the challenges set out in the checklist above, financial services executives may be more prepared for their M&A pursuits.