David Sayer, Global Head of Retail Banking outlines his views on the industry 

Retail banking is absolutely vital to the world economy because it finances trade, it finances businesses, it enables consumers to fund the purchase of their houses, it is absolutely at the heart of the world economy.

New challenges
Talking to the finance director of one of the largest banks in the world I asked him what his top ten issues were, he said, "We no longer have a top ten issues, we have a top 18 to 20 issues which cycle through the top ten in the course of a working day, which is probably five hours longer than it used to be."

The current landscape
The current landscape for retail banking is perhaps the most interesting and challenging I can remember. Our firms’ clients are working with governments and regulators to deal with  the consequences of the 2008 crisis; dealing with a huge swathe of regulatory issues, increasing levels of capital, getting their liquidity right, dealing with consumer issues, dealing with all the changes in regulation and governance, which in turn are generating the need for a new business model.

Global experience
KPMG firms work with many of the largest global banks across the world to some of the smallest financial institutions in the world, and that rich palette of experience that we get with working with clients who are facing very different issues, but actually may have some common solutions, enables us to add value to our clients.

KPMG firms have 16,000 banking professionals around the world. We work with our clients not by producing pre-packaged solutions, but rather by listening to the challenges they face, working with them, and getting through to the best answer.

KPMG firms work with 82 percent of the top 150 banks in the world, and before I leave KPMG I want us to be working with the other 18 percent.