PESTEL and Porter Five Forces Analysis for the Metro Bank Essay

PESTEL and Porter Five Forces Analysis for the Metro Bank - Essay Example PESTEL and Porter Five Forces Analysis for the Metro Bank The topic of the present essay is Metro Bank PLC - a retail bank operating in the United Kingdom. It outlines the basic forces which are favorable to the banking industry in general and to Metro Bank specifically. Among such Legal, Technological, Socio-cultural, Economic and Political forces are discussed. The second part of the paper presents the PESTEL analysis of the bank in question. The threat of new entrants, power of customers, competition in the industry, power of suppliers and threat of substitutes are analyzed. The improved economic performance of the UK’s economy after the 2008 to 2010 economic recession has given businesses including banks a new lease of the life as the economic situation are favorable meaning that there is high likelihood of generating substantial amounts of profits. Yet, it must be understood that this recovery is limited and might take over a decade in order to come to a complete level of fruition. By much the same token, the nascent recovery itself could be called into question by even a simple market fluctuation in the very near future. Socio-cultural force According to Chrystal and Mizen (2006), UK is a host to some of the oldest and world-renowned banks, which means that the culture of banking pre-exists amongst the British people and therefore, Metro Bank is likely to perform well since this force favors its business. As has previously been specified, the level and extent to which trust is exhibited in the system has a profound level of sociocultural importance. Due to the impact of the lost trust associated with the bailouts that took place several years ago, a significantly reduced level of consumer confidence exist with regards to the banking industry and any further action that might seek to revive this lost trust can severely impair the manner through which such a service would be offered. Technological forces The UK as a country is largely driven by technology and the banking industry has greatly embraced information technology meaning that for Metro Bank to compete effectively it has to integrate IT within its business processes (Chrystal and Mizen, 2006). Technological forces that could be evidenced have to do with the fact of the rapid technological change that the sweeping each and every industry in the market. In such a way, the technological threat could be with respect to an entirely new platform or paradigm shift with regards to the banking industry and the inability of the entity in question to rapidly integrate with this paradigm shift and provide services to the consumer base accordingly. However, by the same token, if the service provider/bank is able to integrate with a new level of technology in an efficient manner prior to the competition, this could provide a noted benefit and exponentially increase the level of service provision that it could accomplish. Legal forces After the 2008 to 2010, Chrystal and Mizen (2006) stated that legal regulations in the UK’s banking industry have increased drastically but since Metro Bank was issued with a license it means that it was able to abide by the laid down legal requirements. Of all of the information that is thus far been engaged, the legal threats, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities that exist for a given banking entity are perhaps the most important. Due to the fact that a simple law for an enti re combination of laws in the form of parliamentary legislation could adversely impact the way in which profitability, this potential for change is the most impactful of all of the others which have been discussed. Analysis of