Opportunities
BT Financial Group is one of the largest investment companies specializing in the wealth management. Being the part of the Westpac Group, the company seeks to introduce the production and allocation of investment, retirement products, and superannuation (Our History, n. d.). Insurance operations also involve distribution of loans, deposits, and mortgage among the population.
Due to the fact that the BT Financial Group strives to advance living standards of aged people as well as increase the overall wealth of the population, it introduces as number of important measures and opportunities that can be implemented.
To be more exact, the company should increase professional advice, enhance and promote investment, advance the insurance schemes as more and more people plan to buy houses, introduce higher rates of investment products, and, finally, contribute to augmentation of margin loans among the population.
In order to meet the needs of older generations, the BT Financial Groups should engage more resources and strategies. The major emphasis should be made on a fee-for-service arrangement for advice introduced to customers in the sphere of investments and pensions, eliminating any possible conflicts while preparing an investment portfolio.
In addition, the company also implements changes to the sphere of professional standards to enhance the recruitment requirements and control specific frameworks for measuring the delivery of advice, where the major focus is made on meeting sophisticated product and service needs of clients (BT Financial Group, n. d.).
Margin lending is one of the leading operations enhanced by the company’s intention to protect and improve wealth of the Australian population (James, 2007, n. p.). In whole, this operation provides greater opportunities for the company’s development because it creates a stronger platform for meeting the customers’ needs and demands.
Beside higher quality standards of advising policies, the innovation approaches, particularly the newly established IT frameworks, will contribute to greater productivity and performance of BT Financial Group (Fan, 2011, n. p.).
Hence, the introduction IT capability maturity system can initiate the company into a new strategic level for creating added value and for focusing on the most problematic areas of the production process. The opportunity to increase productivity has appeared due to customers’ growing demands whose request can be better controlled and operated with the introduction of the above presented framework.
Threats
For carrying out certain operations and activities, BT Financial Groups faces certain challenges and threats among which are rapidly aging generations, difficulties in knowledge managements, customers’ security, decline in population growth, and introducing innovations.
For implementing the existing opportunities, high quality and professional advice provided by BT Company is essential for facing the problem of aging generation, which is the major threat to increasing wealth in Australia.
Despite the fact that Australia is considered to be one of the most developed economies, it is still experiencing dramatic aging of its population (McCrindle, 2007, p. 5). Hence, the average age of the Australians is about 37 years compared to 28 years in 1976. If the median age increases, it can have significant influence on society.
Insurance is another cornerstone of the company’s activities that needs to be considered and improved. The abundance of flood claims on the part of the BT’s clients has been a major threat to the managers, but the problem has been successfully overcome as the managers provided new mechanism for handling and controlling revenues and earnings despite the insurance payout increase (Woodington, 2011).
More importantly, rise flood claims have provided the company with a much more favorable ground for strengthening its positions.
Due to the development of small businesses in Australia, BT Financial Group has become more concerned with lending and borrowing being the major sources for carrying out small business transactions (BT Financial Group, 2011).
Indeed, the Australian business landscape tends to be overwhelmed with new opportunities for small-scale projects. Historical perspective analysis also shows that Australia is considered to be the country where the dominating place is given to small businesses (Landstrom, 2009, p. 115).
Attracting more customers is another challenge that needs to be overcome to increase the clientele percentage (Woodington, 2011). Particularly emphasis should be made on meeting customer needs and creating more values for customer via the external marketing process.
Way Forward
With regard to the opportunities and threats outlines above, the company should react in the following manner. First, in order ensure the quality standards and advice efficiency, the company also applies to a customer-centric approach for introducing innovations to investment and superannuation activities (BT Financial Group, n. d.).
In fact, this customer-oriented culture contributes to creating a favorable ground for penetrating to all departments and sections of the company and enhancing the knowledge management (Deschamps, 2008, p. 84). Second, BT approach also involves the advisers at the beginning of the research and development process to ensure that a key strategic investment is congruent with the company’s needs.
For ensuring the quality standards and advice efficiency, the company also applies to a customer-centric approach for introducing innovations to investment and superannuation activities (BT Financial Group, n. d.).
In fact, this customer-oriented culture contributes to creating a favorable ground for penetrating to all departments and sections of the company and enhancing the knowledge management (Deschamps, 2008, p. 84). More importantly, BT approach also involves the advisers at the beginning of the research and development process to ensure that a key strategic investment is congruent with the company’s needs.
Reference List
BT Financial Group (2011). Wholesale and Retail Clients. BT Financial Group Submission. Web.
BT Financial Group. Annual Review and Sustainability Report. Web.
Deschamps, J. P. (2008). Innovation Leaders: How Senior Executives Stimulate, Steer, and Sustain Innovation. US: John Wiley and Sons.
Foo, F. (2011). IT Framework Helps BT Tap Business Value. Australian IT. Web.
James, A. (2007). BT Financial Group Streamlines Information Gathering and Saves A $ 540,000 Per Years. LivePoint. Web.
Landstrom, H. (2009). Pioneers in Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research. US: Springer.
McCrindle, M. (2007). New Generation at Work: Attracting, Recruiting, Retaining and Training Generation Y. US: The ABC of XYZ.
OECD Publishing (2010). OECD Economic Surveys: Australia 2010. Australia: OECD Publishing.
Our History. BT. Web.
Wooddington, M. (2011). BT Earnings Up Despite Floods. Financial Standard. Web.