BO1BSRE301: Concepts of Business Strategy - Environmental Analysis - Report Writing Assessment

• Introduction State the purpose of the report

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia is one of the big four banks in that particular country that was started in the year 1911 by the Australian government to offer different services to its customers. The bank is one of the multinational banks with businesses in different countries, including in the New Zealand, the USA, Fiji, and the United Kingdom as well as in some other Asian countries. The bank also offers some financial services to customers with some of the best services that the bank offers, including, retail services, funds management, insurance cover services, institutional banking, broking and investment services as well as business banking. The bank happens to be the single largest banking institution in the southern hemisphere (Commonwealth, 2015, p 5). ?

The main objective of this particular banking institution is to attain total shareholder return in the top quartile of the Australian listed companies over every rolling five-year period. As such, the key strategic strengths of this particular banking institution are in its brand, diversified business mix and in its scale of operations. The bank happens to be the most recognized banking institutions in the whole of Australia thus making it known to a great pool of customers in that particular country. Concerning its scale of operations, the company has both domestic and international presence with one of the largest clientele base in both Australia and overseas (Commonwealth, 2013, p 15). This report will give an analysis of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia by analysing both its internal and external environment.

• Internal analysis

• Ownership

The Commonwealth Bank was initially owned by the state of Australia before being sold to developers, developers thus making it a private organization. As such, it can only be in order to state that, private citizens run the activities of the bank without any external influences of the government.

• Management skills

The Commonwealth Bank has a strong belief that all the citizens of Australia have the opportunity to develop their different money management skills for effectiveness and efficiency on how they use their money. The Bank’s managing director and chief executive officer are Ian Narev while David Turner is the Bank’s chairman. The management of the bank believes that, if people have good money management skills, then the bank will help in the process of building a financially stable Australia (Commonwealth, 2015, p 6). As a result of this, the bank has made some efforts in trying to support financial literacy education that is always aimed at supporting the financial literacy and education of the Australians for a great deal of time. Additionally, the bank has also come up with programs that are aimed at developing the financial management skills of the country’s youth by way of funding their facilitation.

• Performance analysis

• Financial performance analysis

The performance of the bank over the last three years has seen an increase in the net profit of the bank with it recording a 13 percent and a 13.7 percent of its net profit in the years 2014 and 2015 respectively. The return on equity of the bank has also been seen as improving in the last couple of years. Some of the profitability statistics of the Bank from 2010-2015

• Capital

The bank has continued to strengthen its capital base organically under the Basel III capital regulatory framework. As a result of its development, the group has been placed in a very strong position when compared to its peers in the business making it to be above its regulatory minimum levels (Commonwealth, 2015, p 4).

• Financial Funding

The Commonwealth Bank has in the last couple of years continued to keep its conservative balance sheet setting with a greatly considerable proportion of the bank’s lending, development being funded by growth in the number of deposits made by its customers. In the year 2014, the funding of the bank increased to an approximated four hundred and forty billion dollars and in 2015, it rose to 478 billion Australian dollars.

• Dividends

As per 2015, the final dividend that was declared was at 2.22 Australian dollars per share leading to an increase in the sales of the dividends of the company. The declaration of the dividend by the bank led to an increase in the total dividend to 4.20 Australian dollars per share, which made it to have a five percent increase in dividends compared to the year that immediately followed (Commonwealth, 2015, p 7).

3. External analysis

This section will look at both macro and micro environmental factors that affect the operations of the bank.

• Macro-environmental analysis

  Economic

The capital position of the commonwealth bank is neutral as determined by the standard ratio and RAC. As such, the bank happens to strengthen its levels of capital under the Basel III regulatory framework that would have some serious effects on the Bank’s neutral capital venue (Nico and Gavin, 2014, p. 40).

Technological

The commonwealth bank of Australia was the first bank in the country to offer its clients with real time banking and settlement. Through its EFTOS as well as the ATM services, the bank has been able to offer its customers with a 24 hours access. Other technological services that have really boosted the performance of the bank are that of Nat Bank as well as Comm Sec broker services. The present developments of the bank are that of offering its customers with the best banking services in the country (Commonwealth, 2014,p 20). The bank has also offered its customers with an opportunity to manage every document related to their loans electronically at any given place through a secure online portal (Allen, et al., 2014, p. 19).

These given innovations of the bank have resulted in the improvement of the kind of interface that the bank provides to its customers. As such, the investment of the company into technology can be interpreted to be a way of simplifying their operations leading to increased productivity.

Social

The commonwealth bank of Australia plays a big role in supporting the neighboring communities by offering to the society some financial literacy programs as by collaborating with the available community organization. By engaging in these activities, the bank acts to promote the cultural heritage of the different cultures living in the community that it serves. To build youth literacy, the bank offers literacy facilities to them as a means of building the youth (Commonwealth, 2015,p. 25). As such, the actions of the bank to the society impacts by the society through strengthening as well as extending its bonding with most of the community organization.

Environmental

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia is one of the biggest organizations in the country and it affects the environment both directly and indirectly. For purposes of participating in the process of reducing the amount of impacts that the bank has to the environment, the bank participates in the process of supporting group clients in their efforts towards attaining low carbon economy (Allen, et al., 2014, p. 20). The bank involves in low carbon projects and goes to an extent of locating from most of the inefficient premises and move to those buildings that are considered to be more environmentally competent.

Political

The political analysis of the bank entails the financial deregulation as well as the privatisation of the bank. The policies that existed in the country are strongly linked to the changes that happened in the bank by changing it from the people bank to a private organization. The changing of the bank led it realizing more returns to its managers as well as its shareholders (Allen, et al., 2014, p. 26). The privatisation of the bank has had key impacts to the society with some of the most obvious changes including that of stopping to provide free insurance to the customers and changing into a full profit-oriented bank.

Legal

Legally, the bank is said to have started an open advice review program to offer its customers with excellent financial advices. The bank also collaborates with some of the best advisory agencies like the Independent customer advocate to make sure that the rights of all its customers are well factored in their operations.

II. Micro-environmental analysis

The micro-environmental analysis of the bank will briefly look at the strengths, opportunities, weaknesses and threats of the organization.

• Suppliers

Being one of the largest banking institutions in Australia, the Commonwealth bank deals with a great number of suppliers to sustain its activities. The suppliers are however required to adhere to a certain given code of conduct that defines their relationship with the bank thus making their operations effective and efficient. The bank is supply with stationary and electronic devices from different suppliers who must meet some set requirements of the bank according to its supplier’s code of conduct (Commonwealth, 2015,p 15). The bank offers its stationery mostly from online suppliers.

• Competitors

Being one of the largest banking institutions in country, the bank is faced with very stiff competition from some other three banks in the country. The key competitors of the bank include the National Australia Bank limited, the Westpac Banking Corporation, and the Australian and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (Allen, et al., 2014,p 30). These competitors expose the bank stiff competition thus pushing it to provide some of the best banking services in the company. As time goes by, the number of competitors providing similar services and products to the market is expected to rise thus increasing the state of competition in the market (Nico, and Gavin, 2014, p. 46).

• Customers

The commonwealth bank serves global clientele base. The bank serves all of its

customers on equal basis without favoring any of the customers. The bank also serves both public and private organizations that tend to be in need of some of their services. Most of the customers that are served by the bank tend to come from those regions where the bank has a branch. The bank has over 800, 000 shareholders from all over the world (Nico, and Gavin, 2014, p. 47).

4. Conclusion

To conclude, the bank is seen to be one of the best financial organizations in the country that have recorded tremendous growth over the last couple of years as its profit growth rate is shown in the paper. As shown by the paper, it is all clear that the bank is doing well in almost all the sections, and some growth opportunities have been identified that an make the bank to be effective in its operations. The paper has looked at both the external and internal factors that are seen to affect the operations of the bank in one way or the other. The analysis has included most of the important sections of the organization. The bank is also concerned with its impacts to the society that it serves as well as its influences in the political and economic institutions of the country.