Kingston Financial Group (1031) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Investment Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Kingston Financial Group (Hong Kong)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Kingston Financial Group is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing energy prices, geopolitical disruptions, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing commodity prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Kingston Financial Group
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Kingston Financial Group can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Kingston Financial Group, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Kingston Financial Group operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Kingston Financial Group can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Kingston Financial Group
2. Improving business portfolio management of Kingston Financial Group
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Hong Kong
4. Making a Investment Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Kingston Financial Group
Strengths of Kingston Financial Group | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Kingston Financial Group are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Kingston Financial Group is one of the leading players in the Investment Services industry in Hong Kong. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Hong Kong. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Innovation driven organization
– Kingston Financial Group is one of the most innovative firm in Investment Services sector.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Kingston Financial Group are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Kingston Financial Group comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Investment Services industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Diverse revenue streams
– Kingston Financial Group is present in almost all the verticals within the Investment Services industry. This has provided Kingston Financial Group a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Kingston Financial Group in Investment Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
High brand equity
– Kingston Financial Group has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Kingston Financial Group to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Kingston Financial Group in the Financial sector have low bargaining power. Kingston Financial Group has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Kingston Financial Group to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of Kingston Financial Group
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Kingston Financial Group does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Digital Transformation in Investment Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Kingston Financial Group digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Kingston Financial Group has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Learning organization
- Kingston Financial Group is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Kingston Financial Group is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Kingston Financial Group emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Kingston Financial Group has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Weaknesses of Kingston Financial Group | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Kingston Financial Group are -
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Kingston Financial Group, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Investment Services industry. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Kingston Financial Group supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Kingston Financial Group is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Kingston Financial Group vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High dependence on Kingston Financial Group ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Kingston Financial Group still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Investment Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Kingston Financial Group has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Investment Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Hong Kong, Kingston Financial Group is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the Investment Services industry.
Need for greater diversity
– Kingston Financial Group has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Investment Services industry, Kingston Financial Group needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Skills based hiring in Investment Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Kingston Financial Group has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Kingston Financial Group has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Investment Services industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Kingston Financial Group is one of the leading players in the Investment Services industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Investment Services industry in last five years.
Lack of clear differentiation of Kingston Financial Group products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Kingston Financial Group needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Kingston Financial Group has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Kingston Financial Group Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Kingston Financial Group are -
Buying journey improvements
– Kingston Financial Group can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Investment Services industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Kingston Financial Group can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Kingston Financial Group to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Kingston Financial Group to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Kingston Financial Group in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Investment Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Kingston Financial Group is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Kingston Financial Group can utilize new technology in the field of Investment Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Kingston Financial Group to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Kingston Financial Group can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Investment Services industry.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Kingston Financial Group has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Investment Services industry. This can help Kingston Financial Group to build a more holistic ecosystem for Kingston Financial Group products in the Investment Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Kingston Financial Group can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Kingston Financial Group can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Investment Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Kingston Financial Group can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Kingston Financial Group can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Investment Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Kingston Financial Group can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Kingston Financial Group to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Threats Kingston Financial Group External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Kingston Financial Group are -
Regulatory challenges
– Kingston Financial Group needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Investment Services industry regulations.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Kingston Financial Group can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate Kingston Financial Group prominent markets.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Kingston Financial Group high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Kingston Financial Group has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Investment Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Kingston Financial Group needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Investment Services sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Kingston Financial Group can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the Investment Services industry.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Kingston Financial Group needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Investment Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Environmental challenges
– Kingston Financial Group needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Kingston Financial Group can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Investment Services industry.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Kingston Financial Group may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Investment Services sector.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Kingston Financial Group business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Kingston Financial Group demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in Investment Services industry and other sectors.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Kingston Financial Group in the Investment Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Kingston Financial Group in Investment Services industry. The Investment Services industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Increasing wage structure of Kingston Financial Group
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Kingston Financial Group.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Kingston Financial Group Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Kingston Financial Group needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of Kingston Financial Group is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of Kingston Financial Group is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Kingston Financial Group to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Kingston Financial Group needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
