Capco Interview

Question 1

What do you know about Capco?

Answer 1

Technology and management consulting firm - focused on financial services - operating globally, from Europe to the Americas to Asia Pacific
Aim to transform way clients operate through innovative digital and business solutions
Work in industries inc. banking and payments, capital markets, wealth and asset management, insurance, energy
Service inc. digital, consulting, tech

5,500+ employees

Question 2

What will you do on the graduate scheme?

What do data consultants do?

Answer 2

Broadly involves
Beginning w/ an intensive programme - FS, consulting, project delivery
–> rotations through different business areas

Working collaboratively w/ clients to use data to help solve complex business problems in data driven and innovative way
Range of tasks - central will be assimilation and analysis of data -
+ communicating this clients and colleagues
Identifying trends, risks and opportunities
Developing ideas in-house to boost Capco’s brand and profile

data consultants - examine data, processes and tech to evaluate current state and critical problems

Question 3

Why the graduate scheme? Why consulting? Why Tech?

Answer 3

offers the opportunity to make significant personal impact leveraging data and technology to provide innovative solutions to complex problems
AND communicate these ideas to clients and colleagues
→ Training - facilitates successful ability to do so
E.g. beginning w/ data academy bootcamp, peer buddy, and rotations
Hands-on and technical training to support professional development and Continue to learn new ways of doing things, varied working life
→ Client-facing and collaborative role
Appealing to both collaborate with large clients, e.g. banks, insurance companies - helping them overcome various challenges
+ work alongside senior partners in non-hierarchical structure
From outset offers opportunity to make genuine contribution

→ Fast-paced and varied - new computational and statistical methods to learn and apply - huge range of tasks, business, and industries to work in

Question 4

Why data consulting ?

Answer 4

Broadly - offers the opportunity to make significant personal impact leveraging data and technology to provide innovative solutions to complex problems
- interested in use of technical skills, e.g. advanced statistical and computational methods

AND applying them to real world, using commercial awareness - draw new insights and approaches

+ communicate these findings and ideas to clients and colleagues - comprehensively and convincingly

Question 5

Why Capco?

Answer 5

1. working culture: Collab inclusive, non-hierarcial
   Appealing to both collaborate with large clients, e.g. banks, insurance companies - helping them overcome various challenges
   + work alongside senior partners in non-hierarchical structure
   From outset offers opportunity to make genuine contribution, even at junior level
   Underpinned by Capco’s values, respect, excellence, integrity, commitment, knowledge
2. Innov and entrepreneurial Training - committed to growing and hiring best talent
   Fast-paced environment with varied working life, but supported to achieve thay through range of technical training and practical experience

3.FS focus
Work w/ 75% of world’s global FS institutions
Work experience sparked interest in financial sector, particular use of data-driven analysis to advise clients - offered insight into value consultants can have within financial sector
quantitatively providing solutions to help clients realise their commercial value, identify risks and optimise processes AND through data gain unique insights and really innovate business strategies
Enthusiastic about opportunity to do work that has genuine impact on financial markets each day - both helping clients and in achieving more sustainable sector - through Capco’s Social Responsibility program

Question 6

Why the financial sector?

Answer 6

As history student - interested in wider mechanisms that influence change and critical analysis + through master’s and science background - interest in quantitatively analysing problems and developing innovative and data driven solutions
Specifically, interested in data consulting within financial sector - many firms yet to realise the huge range of options using their data can provide
Offers opportunity to make genuine impact and play useful role in identifying key business benefits
+ idea of communicating these ideas w/ clients

Question 7

Capco Values and how my skills link

Answer 7

Respect
Tutoring and working within diverse groups - understand variety in skillsets, experiences, ideas

Integrity
Assistant manager stealing tips when running shifts, went to manager to report - was friendly w/ assistant manager but felt it was not the right thing to be doing

Excellence
Academic success + marketing analytics, when developing logistic regression model - created visualisations to improve how I communicated my results - helped understanding and gained new insights

Commitment
Academic success + marketing analytics, when developing logistic regression model - created visualisations to improve how I communicated my results - helped understanding and gained new insights
To prepare tutees - created revision guides w/ summary notes and exam content - then used by rest of tutoring company

Knowledge
Keen sense of intellectual curiosity - whilst on Master’s have enjoyed learning new data analytics and computational method + applying them to real world examples

Question 8

Capco Clients and competitors

Answer 8

Clients: Fortune 500 companies spanning numerous industries inc. medical, tech, financial services and media industries e.g.
MyBank, Instanda, Natwest

E.g. Natwest - helped launch Mettle - targetted at helping SMEs
E.g. helped tier 1 bank segment customers - cost benefits
Tier 1 capital - capital adequacy of a bank
E.g.supported design of wealth management platform
A: huge breadth of clients and tasks

Competitors: Deloitte, Willis Towers Watson, Protivi
- Capco specialises in FS - 3 pillars: digital, consulting, tech + w/ WIPRO - sig delivery of end to end services in consulting, tech and transformation for FS

Question 9

How do retail banks make money?

Answer 9

Typically, 3 ways
1. Net interest margin
Charge customers interest on loans e.g. overdrafts, mortgage

2. Fees
   Fees and penalties tied to having a banka account
   E.g. minimum deposit limits, ATM or overdraft fees
3. Interchange
   Charge merchants, e.g. department stores, restaurants, for customer paying at their business place - covering cost of handling debit and credit transactions
   Set by credit card companies

Question 10

Types of banks

Answer 10

Traditional banks - older, legacy banks w/ physical locations
Credit unions - member owned w/ physical locations
Online banks - no physical locations

Question 11

Opportunities in financial industry

Answer 11

Central: integrating technology and utilising data - esp important when recovering from COVID
Key: benefits yet to be realised by many firms - examples inc:
Personalised banking - using AI to generate personalised financial advice
Optimising processes
E.g. data science to find insights into trade processes, plan resources, avoid regulatory finds and reputational damage
- predict and identify problems before they have even occurred
Client predictions
E.g. customer segmentation to predict customer churn or model revenue to provide best service to clients
Financial risk assessment
E.g. use ML to make smarter lending decisions

Question 12

Challenges in financial industry

Answer 12

Broadly: revenue growth and market relevance big challenges –> tech central
- data and tech sols

1. Recovering from COVID - crucial link between data, tech and recovery
2. innovating and incorporating new tech - raising to challenge of fintechs and AI
   e. g. to innovate business strategies to realise commercial potential, streamline processes and identify risks and opportunities
   e. g. innov use of tech to streamline company operations, resources focused on revenue sources > operations - e.g. managign IT from diff depts
3. Cybersecurity - huge amount of data both assett and risk + regulatory differences between countries needs to be considered

Question 13

Do you think the banking sector is over regulated? What is financial regulation

Answer 13

Financial regulation: regulation of financial institutions e.g. banks, stock exchanges, investment funds

Drawbacks:

• Admin costs
• Competitiveness
• Flow to other less regulated countries

Pros :
- Accountability and Transparency
Holds banks and businesses operating within financial system accountable - esp important now w/ high speed of trading and interconnectedness
–>
Transparency can drive further reform and improvements - e.g. ESG data from businesses to get better idea - helps inform investor decisions → less risky investments

Value in data and tech
Achieving transparency + mitigate risks that come w/ regulatory changes
Helping businesses both predict AND innovate business strategies - e.g. Natwest

Question 14

What is analytics?

Answer 14

Application of data, maths skills and tech to answer questions, discover relationships, predict unknown outcomes and automate decisions
Inc. ML and data science, statistical modelling, natural language processing, knowledge graphs

Question 15

What is consulting

Answer 15

Using deep industry knowledge to advise organisations in developing and implementing business strategies

Question 16

How would you define ML and AI

Answer 16

ML: Science of programming computers so they can learn from data

AI: development of computer systems to be able to perform tasks usually requiring human intelligence

Question 17

How AI is disrupting banks?

Answer 17

AI disruption:
4 key channels: higher profit, personalisation, rapid innov cycles, customer segment

Tailoring recommendations and services - predicting trends, patterns, risk - optimising processes
Banks struggling to scale AI technologies - failed to adapt and incorporate - across whole org - e.g. lack of clear strategy, lack of tech - why Capco is valuable

Question 18

How do you keep up to date on the changes in our industry, from regulations to tech? examples

Answer 18

Range of news sources - e.g. Harvard Business Review, FT + tech related, towards data science, a subset of medium

+ also interested in trends within consulting, look at McKinsey, Bain insights
e.g. McKinsey - integration of cloud tech becoming more widespread - e.g. research labs

Question 19

What have you done in the last few months to strengthen your professional network?

Answer 19

Mishcon work - through uni project consulted for law firm, now being set up for dissertation at the firm through work

Question 20

How would you make Capco more profitable?

Answer 20

Has much of the infrastructure to utilise data and tech –>
1 - communicating and convincing clients to utilise the tech is challenge - would be interested in this role - understanding business needs and relevant tech + convincng why needed

2 - merging w/ Wipro, had experience w/ operational effiviency - working and academic life - could offer insight into streamlining processes - both w/ employees and services

Question 21

Recent news about Capco - price, significance

Answer 21

Wipro to acquire Capco in $1.5bn deal

who is Wipro? IT services company - specialised in IT and outsourcing

sig: merging Wipro’s IT and digital transformation expertise w/ Capco’s in management consulting, risk and regulations

one of largest “end-to-end global consulting, tech and transformation service providers to FS globally’

Question 22

Recent news that may impact Capco/NRF

Answer 22

Brexit: FT - Irish assets leave London in €100bn post-Brexit switch

• transfer to Brussels
• evidence of deepening split following Britain’s departure from single market
• 50 companies listed on Irish stock exchange
• sig: companies requiring support from Capco to handle new reg. and relations w/ Europe + potential concerns over remaining in London

General: HBR - digital transformation –> incr. cybersecurity risks

details: tech-led initiatives expanding amount of customer data available - need to manage innovation-driven cybersecurity risk, e.g. risk management and robust security for cloud tech

implication for Capco/NRF: requirement of clients when implementing new tech - need to help them implement and understand how to protect sensitive information

solution: balance innovation w/ due diligence at start of product development cycle - cybersecurity checks built into the process from the beginning

Question 23

Use of analytics in FS - how can Capco help companies + examples

Answer 23

sig: all interplay together 
1 - customer segmentation
e.g. 
- Personalised services - 
AI assistants - personalised advice
- client churn prediction 
- credit risk
- create accurate client personas, inc. new client revenue prediction

2 - risks and regulatory changes e.g.

• account quarantine forecasting - use data science to proactively plan resources and avoid regulatory finds and reputational damage
• know-your-customer optimisation

3 - optimise processes
- insights into trade processes, optimise - e.g. bond settlement fails reduction

Question 24

M&A - process and challenges

Answer 24

planning/intro –> due diligence –> bid, negotiations, sign deal –> post-merger integration

Cost synergies
- shared resources, streamlined operations, people

Revenue synergies

• market expansion - e.g. geog, products, demographics
• value added in tech + other operational additions

Challenges

• integrating people: different work cultures - employees and management
• tech integration - e.g. custom built solutions
• customer engagement - may be concerned by M&A - need to communicate why occurign etc

Question 25

Big tech trend for FS

Answer 25

Machine Learning - fed vast datasets to learn about changes w/o human input

–> systems can adapt and improve based on experience w/o user intervention

uses inc. trading workflows, sentiment analysis of news stories and social media

–> constantly evolving anf finding new areas to impror