1. When no one is quite sure who decides
In many banks today, the most difficult moments do not arrive with drama.
They arrive quietly.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Access deeper industry intelligence
Experience unmatched clarity with a single platform that combines unique data, AI, and human expertise.
An issue surfaces.
Time matters.
Customers are waiting.
Risk is present, but not yet visible.
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalDataAnd yet, the first question is not what should we do?
It is who decides?
The answer is rarely clear. Ownership sits between functions. Authority is shared, but accountability is not. Decisions move sideways before they move forward. By the time clarity emerges, the moment that required leadership has already passed.
This is not a failure of intent or competence. It is a structural problem that has grown inside modern banking institutions, largely unnoticed.
The leadership challenge banks face today is not about vision, ambition, or strategy. It is about how decisions actually flow when pressure appears.
2. Why leadership feels harder than it used to
Banks have never been simple organisations, but they have become materially more complex over the last decade.
Scale has increased. Products are more interconnected. Regulatory expectations are broader. Operating models are layered with controls designed to protect the institution, its customers, and the wider system.
Each layer is reasonable in isolation. Together, they change how leadership works.
Decision-making, once closer to the point of consequence, is now distributed across committees, functions, and escalation paths. Authority is often conditional. Accountability is shared. Risk is managed collectively.
This has created an environment where leadership is present in structure but diluted in practice.
Senior leaders remain responsible but are increasingly distant from the moment decisions need to be made. Middle layers absorb complexity but often lack the authority to act decisively. Front-line teams see issues first, but do not own the decision to resolve them fully.
The result is not paralysis, but drift.
3. How institutions drift into this problem
No bank sets out to design itself this way. The drift happens slowly, through sensible choices made over time.
A new approval step is added to reduce exposure.
A committee is formed to ensure consistency.
A control is introduced to prevent recurrence.
A decision right is shared to avoid individual risk.
Each decision is defensible. Many are necessary.
Over time, however, decision pathways lengthen. Ownership becomes conditional. Responsibility is spread thinly enough that no single person feels fully authorised to act under pressure.
Escalation exists but is avoided because it feels heavy. Local resolution feels safer, even when it is incomplete. Issues are stabilised rather than resolved.
From the outside, the institution appears controlled. Internally, people learn how to navigate around formal structures to keep things moving.
Leadership becomes something that exists in meetings, rather than moments.
4. Risk lives in the space between decisions
Risk in modern banking rarely appears as a single event. It accumulates in the gaps between decisions.
An exception is approved because rejecting it would delay a customer.
A manual workaround is accepted because the system fix will take time.
A dependency is tolerated because it usually holds.
An incident is closed once stability returns, not when the root cause is removed.
None of these actions are reckless. Most are taken with care and good judgement. The risk emerges when these decisions are not owned end to end.
When authority is unclear, decisions are framed as temporary. Temporary decisions, when repeated, become structural. Over time, the institution carries risk not because people ignored it, but because no one was clearly responsible for eliminating it.
Leadership, in this context, is less about bold action and more about clarity. About knowing who owns a decision, and who carries the consequence if it proves wrong.
5. Why governance often sees this too late
Boards and senior executives are not unaware of these issues. They receive reports. They review incidents. They commission assurance.
What they rarely see is how decisions behave before they become reportable.
Formal reporting smooths reality. It aggregates, categorises, and reassures. It focuses on outcomes rather than the path taken to reach them. By the time something escalates to board visibility, it has usually been active for some time.
The issue is not lack of information, but lack of visibility into decision flow.
How long did it take for ownership to be established?
Who felt authorised to act in the first hour?
Which decisions were deferred, and why?
Where did accountability feel unclear?
These questions are difficult to capture in dashboards, but they are central to understanding leadership effectiveness in practice.
6. Leadership is now a design problem
In many discussions, leadership is still treated as a personal attribute. Experience, judgement, confidence, presence.
These qualities matter, but they are not sufficient.
In modern banking institutions, leadership effectiveness is largely determined by design. By how authority is distributed. By how escalation works in reality. By how much autonomy exists at the point of impact.
Strong leaders placed into weak structures will still struggle. Clear structures allow average leaders to perform well under pressure.
This is why leadership development alone will not solve the problem. Nor will reorganisations that change reporting lines without addressing decision rights.
The real question institutions need to confront is whether their operating model allows leadership to function when conditions are imperfect.
7. What effective leadership looks like today
In institutions where leadership works well under pressure, certain patterns are visible.
Decision ownership is explicit.
Authority is bounded, but real.
Escalation paths are few and trusted.
Leaders stay close enough to operations to understand consequence.
Decisions are made early, even if they are later refined.
These institutions do not avoid mistakes. They avoid ambiguity.
Importantly, this clarity is not created through slogans or culture programmes. It is built through disciplined design and constant reinforcement.
Leadership is treated as an institutional capability, not an individual trait.
8. A quiet constraint on the Bank of Tomorrow
The future of banking is often discussed in terms of innovation, competition, and change. These forces matter, but they are not the primary constraint facing institutions.
The deeper constraint is whether banks can still make clear decisions, at the right level, at the right time.
As institutions grow larger and more complex, this becomes harder, not easier. Without conscious design, leadership diffuses. Responsibility fragments. Risk accumulates quietly.
The banks that endure will not be those with the most ambitious strategies, but those that can still decide under pressure.
That capability is not visible from the outside. It does not announce itself. But over time, it shapes everything an institution becomes.
Dr. Gulzar Singh, Chartered Fellow – Banking and Technology; CEO, Phoenix Empire Ltd
