Circumstances :
- The Company is a medium sized company, in the top 3 of Belgian pension funds, covering complementary pension plans for self employed professionals in the medical sector. It manages about 1 billion EUR of assets and employs 35 well skilled people.
- In September 2008, at the beginning of the financial crisis, the former CEO put an end to her contract, leaving the company in a most difficult and uncertain situation.
- B-Management was asked by the Board of the Company to search urgently for an interim CEO.
Assignment objectives :
- The Board defined two initial objectives for the CEO ai :
o guarantee operational continuity,
o design a new strategic development plan for the pension fund.
- Were added during the assignment:
o Crisis management during critical period of major upheaval in the financial sector,
o transition of commercial activity after the departure of the commercial director.
Management approach:
- It is clear that the Company enjoys a lot of strengths as one of the biggest players in the pension funds sector in Belgium.
- But a quick analysis showed some important organisational and operational weaknesses:
o Far from perfect corporate governance
o High turn around of staff and top managers
o Lack of most basic operational procedures
o Threats of discontinuity due to concentration of key responsibilities around a limited number of managers and technicians.
o Non-professional external communication and total absence of internal communication.
o Concentration of income flows on two products and one single niche market
- Fundamental changes in the operational processes and the elaboration of a new strategic plan brought appropriate solutions to these problems.
Operational and strategic results:
- Launched and implemented a structured plan of external and internal communication, with special focus on crisis communication procedures;
- Created access to new markets of para-medical and self employed professionals.
- Managed cost budgets by benchmarking with similar market players
- Managed assets in accordance to the evolution of future liabilities, resulting in a full coverage of long term liabilities
- Designed a management information system (dashboard) for the Board members