Close the gap between present challenges and future success
In the competitive, dynamic financial services industry, having a clear vision for the future isn’t enough. You need strategy, alignment and accountability to achieve it.
Financial services organizations are facing challenging economic and regulatory landscapes, and many are still struggling to meet changes in customer expectations in the digital age. To stay competitive, organizations need to adapt to new technologies and new ways of doing business — all while balancing risk.
Having an agile plan that meets your industry-specific needs and keeps you future-ready is the foundation for lasting success. And Wipfli can help, working closely with your organization to develop a plan capable of helping you stay competitive.
Why Wipfli?
Wipfli provides strategy facilitation and operational consulting tailored to the needs of financial services organizations.
Our experienced team evaluates how you conduct day-to-day business and helps you identify and implement the strategies needed to achieve your vision of the future. Combined with our hands-on approach, we can provide proven solutions, detailed comparisons and quantitative benchmarks for any asset size or type of organization.
We look at your challenges from all angles — strategic, digital and cultural — to help you implement the changes you need to optimize operations and improve profits.
Strategy
Develop a growth mindset and future-ready organization by working with professionals who have experience advising financial services organizations on all facets of strategic thinking and strategic planning.
Whether you need a plan that helps you sustain performance, make changes to meet your future needs or revolutionize the way you do business, Wipfli can help. Our industry- customized strategic planning can include:
- One-on-one interviews.
- Comprehensive financial analysis (including custom peer group analysis).
- GPS survey (online key stakeholder strategy assessment).
- Meetings with the board of directors, CEO and/or planning committee.
- Facilitation of on-site strategic planning meeting(s).
- Development of a written strategic plan with action plans for implementation and execution.
- Technology alignment to help ensure that your systems and human capital stay aligned with strategic objectives.
Wipfli’s services don’t end with deployment. We know that optimization is a continual process, and we’re ready to help you evaluate progress and re-strategize when needed. We also know that a key element of achieving your strategy is understanding enterprise risk management as well as identifying the experience you provide customers, clients and members.
Our strategy support services include:
- Ongoing accountability support.
- Customer, member and technology mapping.
- Enterprise risk management, risk identification and assessment.
- Strategy implementation.
Wipfli’s digital advisory team can help you create a technology strategy capable of helping you accelerate your vision. We apply holistic planning and ideation to help your organization transform with services, including:
- Human-centered planning and ideation to help you envision the future of your organization and develop a strategy to achieve it.
- Technology initiative assessments and readiness benchmarking to help guide you through the software selection process.
- CIO advisory to shape your organization’s digital strategy at the executive level.
- Program management designed to help you coordinate multiple technology initiatives.
Operations
Increase profits and elevate efficiency with lean strategies for financial institutions. Our experienced consultants can help you identify opportunities to improve net income and strategies to reduce cost.
Wipfli’s process and profit improvement services can help you optimize operations, assist with knowledge transfer, improve efficiency ratios and increase profitability. Our services can include:
- Reviewing sources of fee income for potential earnings improvement.
- Review of data capture and reporting.
- Ratio analysis and branch profitability, including service lines.
- Pricing and margin improvement.
- Call reporting.
- Assessing core processing systems.
Wipfli’s project management and business advisory services are ready to help you achieve success with your solutions investments. We provide compressive support for implementation, including assistance with communication, task prioritization, alignment and budgeting. And our industry-experienced team can help guide you in best practices and system design.
Our team
Robert H. Zondag, CTP
Robert H. Zondag brings leadership experience as an entrepreneur and executive in financial services. His clients have included financial institutions, technology companies, healthcare organizations and government entities. Robert is passionate about bringing clarity to his clients when they face complex business issues and regulatory matters.
Marcie Bomberg-Montoya, OCI, OEI
Marcie Bomberg-Montoya brings over 25 years of experience in executive leadership roles in both financial institutions and private enterprise to her engagements. She has developed a high level of proficiency, leading a myriad of complex enterprise-wide endeavors such as mergers and acquisitions, strategic analysis and plan implementation, growth and transformation strategies, as well as innovative product and service development.
Karen A. Mitchell
Karen Mitchell brings more than 25 years of experience in the financial services and nonprofit industries, as well as industry and regulatory perspectives to her work. Karen currently provides consulting services in the areas of risk management, particularly enterprise risk. She assists clients in obtaining the highest level of success by helping to identify and navigate the risks associated with achieving strategic objectives.
Carlos Vega
Carlos Vega is a diversified digital strategy and transformation expert who has worked in multiple senior roles in strategic planning, finance and IT. He has held various senior digital transformation roles for some of the largest automotive and automotive finance organizations in the world, along with large financial institutions, banking software companies and fintech startups. He is passionate about breaking down customer frustration points by building engaging experiences using data, research and emerging technologies. Carlos believes the status quos in many industries needs to be challenged and reinvented in order to evolve and survive due to the current digital evolution.
Danielle M. Damon, CIA
Danielle Damon is a manager in Wipfli’s financial institutions practice. She works with financial institution clients as a consultant in the areas of operations, process improvements, customized gap analysis, call report preparation, review and training, and risk-based internal audit.
State of the banking industry report 2025
How do financial institution executives feel about the future? Our fourth annual “State of the banking industry” report uncovered confidence, despite rising threats and uncertainty.
