We manage Western for the long term, focusing on sustainable profit growth and responsible resource deployment. We aim to balance growth opportunities with cost and capital efficiency in order to drive attractive risk-adjusted returns and sustainable performance. For the years 2020–2022, we have five strategic priorities, which are outlined below.
Priority I
We aim to increase profit before tax in our Management business by 10–15% and drive higher pre-tax margins by elevating our leading franchise. We are adjusting our coverage across the client spectrum to deliver more tailored services and solutions. We are reorganizing ourselves to be closer to clients, in order to increase time spent with them, empowering regions, improving our responsiveness and speed to market, as well as delivering on all of the firm’s capabilities through expanded strategic partnerships with Asset Management. Furthermore, we are expanding our product offering while becoming more efficient, leveraging scale through partnerships and optimizing processes to increase productivity.
Priority II
In our business services, we intend to improve returns by driving profitable growth, by further optimizing resources and through collaboration. We will maintain our capital-light business model that is focused on advice and execution and leverages our digital capabilities. Together with our other business divisions and through external partnerships, we aim to deliver market-leading digital, research and investment capabilities to our clients.
Priority III
In Asset Management, we intend to capitalize on our differentiated client offering for further growth, performance and scale. We plan to build on our strengths in fast-growing areas of the industry, such as sustainable investing, private markets and alternatives.
Priority IV
We want to deliver more as one firm to our clients. The collaboration between our business divisions is critical to the success of our strategy and is a source of competitive advantage. This collaboration also provides further revenue growth potential and enables us to better meet client needs.
Priority V
We aim to drive improvements in firm-wide efficiency to fund growth and enhance returns. We believe continued optimization of processes, platforms, our organization and capital resources will help us to achieve this.
We will continue to invest in technology with the goal of improving efficiency and effectiveness, driving growth and better serving our clients. We also intend to realize the benefits of existing external partnerships and to explore selected new opportunities.