Strategic Planning for Banking and Financial Services Training Course
| Course code | SD-SP-031 |
|---|---|
| Duration | 5 days |
| Level | Intermediate |
| Category | Strategic Planning |
| Delivery | Classroom or live online |
| Language | English |
| Certificate | Certificate of completion |
Course overview
Banking leaders must set growth priorities while protecting capital, liquidity, conduct standards and customer trust. A strategic plan that treats revenue targets separately from credit quality, operational resilience, regulatory change and technology investment can create avoidable exposure. This course helps participants turn market signals, portfolio performance and regulatory constraints into an integrated plan for a bank, business unit, product line or financial-services function.
Participants learn to frame strategic choices using PESTLE, SWOT, Porter’s Five Forces, scenario planning and banking-specific performance measures. They assess market attractiveness, segment customers, evaluate competitive position, define strategic themes, construct a balanced scorecard and translate priorities into initiatives, owners, milestones and risk indicators. The course addresses capital and liquidity considerations, Basel III constraints, IFRS 9 credit-risk implications, digital banking investment cases, conduct risk and operational-resilience planning.
Teaching combines instructor-led strategy sessions with banking cases, data-led workshops and facilitated peer review. Participants work with a realistic bank planning pack containing portfolio, customer, profitability, risk and market data. They leave with a board-ready strategic planning pack: strategic ambition, diagnostic findings, scenario assumptions, chosen priorities, scorecard, initiative roadmap, risk register and governance cadence for monitoring execution.
The course is designed for intermediate managers and specialists who contribute to annual planning, transformation portfolios, business-unit strategy or performance management within banks, lenders, insurers, wealth managers and related financial-services organisations.
Course objectives
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
- Diagnose a banking business unit’s strategic position using PESTLE, SWOT and Porter’s Five Forces
- Interpret portfolio profitability, customer segmentation, capital, liquidity and credit-risk indicators for strategic decisions
- Build plausible banking scenarios with defined macroeconomic, regulatory and competitive assumptions
- Formulate strategic themes and measurable objectives linked to risk appetite and customer outcomes
- Construct a Balanced Scorecard with financial, customer, process, people and risk measures
- Prioritise strategic initiatives using value, feasibility, dependency, capital and risk criteria
- Develop a three-year implementation roadmap with milestones, accountable owners and governance forums
- Produce a board-ready strategic planning pack including a risk register and performance dashboard
Benefits of attending
For you
- Gain a repeatable method for preparing a bank or business-unit strategic plan rather than relying on generic planning templates
- Strengthen credibility in planning meetings by linking growth proposals to capital, liquidity, credit and conduct-risk implications
- Build confidence presenting strategic choices, scenarios and trade-offs to executive committees and board-level stakeholders
- Create a portfolio-ready strategic planning pack that demonstrates practical banking strategy capability
- Improve readiness for strategy, business-management, transformation and senior planning roles in financial services
For your organisation
- Produces more coherent business-unit plans that connect commercial targets with risk appetite and regulatory constraints
- Improves investment prioritisation by assessing initiatives against value, feasibility, dependencies, capital and risk
- Reduces execution drift through named owners, milestone plans, governance forums and leading performance indicators
- Strengthens challenge of growth assumptions using scenario analysis, portfolio data and external market evidence
- Creates a common planning language across finance, risk, operations, product and transformation teams
Target competencies
Who should attend
- Banking Strategy Managers — who must convert enterprise priorities into executable business-unit plans
- Business Unit Heads — who need to balance growth, customer outcomes and risk-adjusted returns
- Financial Planning and Analysis Managers — who connect budgets, forecasts and strategic performance measures
- Risk Managers — who need to embed risk appetite, capital and operational-resilience considerations in strategy
- Transformation and PMO Managers — who govern strategic initiative portfolios, dependencies and delivery milestones
- Product and Digital Banking Managers — who must justify investment choices against customer, market and regulatory evidence
Requirements and prerequisites
Participants should have at least two years of experience in banking, lending, payments, wealth management, insurance or a financial-services support function, and should understand their organisation’s planning cycle. Familiarity with basic financial statements, budgeting, KPIs, customer segments and common banking terms such as credit risk, capital, liquidity and risk appetite is assumed. Participants should be comfortable reviewing spreadsheet-based performance data and presenting recommendations. Advanced corporate-finance modelling, coding, Power BI development and prior formal strategy qualifications are not required. A laptop with Microsoft Excel is strongly recommended for workshop exercises.
Training methodology
The programme uses short instructor-led inputs followed by structured application to a simulated retail and commercial bank. Participants analyse market, portfolio, profitability, risk and customer data in Excel; test assumptions through scenario workshops; and debate strategic choices in cross-functional groups. Banking cases examine growth-versus-risk trade-offs, digital investment decisions and regulatory constraints. Each day adds a component to an individual or team strategic planning pack. On day five, participants present their plan to a simulated executive committee and complete an application plan for their own organisation.
Course outline
Day 1: Banking strategy context and diagnostic discipline
- Strategic planning cycle for banks and financial-services business units
- Banking value creation, risk-adjusted return and stakeholder expectations
- PESTLE analysis for macroeconomic, regulatory and technology change
- Porter’s Five Forces in retail, corporate and digital banking markets
- SWOT analysis supported by internal performance evidence
- Customer segmentation, customer economics and proposition fit
- Interpreting portfolio profitability, growth and concentration data
Workshop: Participants analyse a simulated bank’s market and internal data to produce a one-page strategic diagnostic and priority issue list.
Day 2: Risk, regulation and strategic choice
- Risk appetite statements as strategic decision boundaries
- Basel III capital, liquidity and leverage considerations
- IFRS 9 expected credit loss implications for growth plans
- Conduct risk, consumer duty and customer-outcome measures
- Operational resilience and third-party dependency assessment
- Scenario planning using macroeconomic and regulatory drivers
- Strategic option generation and strategic-fit testing
Workshop: Participants build three planning scenarios for the simulated bank and test each option against risk appetite, capital and liquidity constraints.
Day 3: From strategic ambition to measurable priorities
- Defining strategic ambition, scope and planning horizons
- Strategic themes for growth, efficiency, resilience and customer trust
- Balanced Scorecard architecture for financial-services organisations
- Risk-adjusted performance measures including RAROC and cost-to-income ratio
- Customer, digital adoption and service-performance indicators
- Leading and lagging key risk indicators
- Target setting, baseline validation and metric ownership
Workshop: Participants create a strategy map and Balanced Scorecard with objectives, measures, targets and accountable owners for a chosen business unit.
Day 4: Initiative portfolios, investment cases and execution roadmaps
- Strategic initiative definition and benefits-realisation logic
- Investment-case assumptions for digital, data and process-change programmes
- Prioritisation matrices using value, feasibility, risk and dependency criteria
- Capital allocation and resource-capacity trade-offs
- Programme dependencies, sequencing and critical-path analysis
- Three-year roadmap design with milestones and decision gates
- Governance forums, escalation routes and management information
Workshop: Participants prioritise a bank initiative portfolio and produce a sequenced three-year roadmap with investment assumptions, owners and decision gates.
Day 5: Board-ready planning and strategic execution
- Board and executive committee expectations for strategic planning papers
- Strategic narrative construction and evidence-based recommendation writing
- Dashboard design in Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Power BI
- Strategic risk registers and mitigation ownership
- Annual planning, budgeting and rolling-forecast integration
- Performance review cadence and corrective-action triggers
- Stakeholder engagement and strategy communication planning
Workshop: Participants assemble and present a board-ready strategic planning pack, receive executive-style challenge, and complete a 90-day workplace application plan.
Tools & standards covered
Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, Basel III, IFRS 9
A typical training day
| 08:30 – 10:30 | First session |
| 10:30 – 10:45 | Refreshment break |
| 10:45 – 12:30 | Second session |
| 12:30 – 13:30 | Lunch and networking |
| 13:30 – 15:00 | Third session |
| 15:00 – 15:15 | Refreshment break |
| 15:15 – 16:30 | Workshop and daily review |
Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.
What the fee includes
- Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
- Full course workbook and materials
- Exercise files, templates and case studies
- Certificate of completion
- Refreshments and lunch (classroom deliveries)
- Post-course application plan
- Facilitator follow-up on request
- Group rates from five participants
How you can take this course
Classroom
Scheduled sessions in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kigali, Dar es Salaam, Dubai and Cape Town.
Live online
The same facilitator and materials, delivered live for distributed teams and individuals.
In-house
Delivered privately for your team, at your offices or a venue of your choice, tailored to your context. Request a proposal.
Certification
Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.
Frequently asked questions
Upcoming sessions
New dates are being scheduled. Ask us about the next session or an in-house delivery for your team.
Ask about datesGroup of 5+?
Request in-house delivery or group rates →Related courses in Strategic Planning
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