Presupuestación en redes de sucursales bancarias y aplicación en la mejora de la eficiencia. Modelos explicativo-predictivos para la gestión integral de costes asociados a variables de consumo actuables

Abstract

The retail financial business in Spain is going through a process of deep restructuring caused by regulatory changes affecting the minimum capital requirements and liquidity coverage, an excess of installed capacity, the evolution in the consumer habits, potential incumbents (fintech companies) and a dramatic reduction in the margins due to the lower interest rates and the difficulty of transferring fees for possible improvements in quality of service to the final customer. In this context, financial institutions need more precise budgeting models than ever before, to ensure the reduction of deviations in their consumption, as well as an adequate costs management affecting overall efficiency, a key element of business strategy, in a competitive environment, very demanding in itself by its maturity. The questioning of the budget as a management tool has led to the emergence of currents of thought that call for the implementation of partial improvements (Better Bugeting) or even a complete rethinking of the concept (Beyond Budgeting), that still allow to approach areas of research such as described in this study, whose objective is the analysis of suitability of Zero-based Budgeting use in the specific field of the retail financial entities with bank branch network, understanding the budget as a potentially useful tool for the needs assessment and the distribution of available resources, expressed from their costs. For this purpose, a quantitative methodology of evidence and causal analysis has been used, trying to identify the possible explanatory relationships of the expenditure behaviour in a bank branch from variables such as size (area, staff), age or activity level. An analysis has been made of those variables that cover the most part of the feasible cost perimeter in a bank branch (energy consumption, office supplies, cash management, commercial information, legal services and commercial expenses). The results obtained confirm that the budget based on predictive models on the expected expenditure behaviour in bank branches improves the forecasting efforts by the reduction of the estimation errors measured against the actual billing. The study allows to contrast that "zero base" budgeting is an adequate tool for a more equitable distribution of resources, comprehensive management of expenditure and in general contributes to the improvement of profitability in retail banking entities.