Management Accounting in Financial Services

Abstract

Abstract This chapter focuses on the changing role of management accounting and control in the financial services sector over the last 25 years. It identifies two key phases that impacted the use and nature of management accounting systems. The first phase relates to the (global) deregulation of the industry and shows how, as a result of increased competition, a new emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness emerged. Management accounting techniques (such as activity-based costing (ABC) and the balanced scorecard) became the primary devices to manage costs and performance. The chapter then highlights how, during the second phase of reregulation and the resulting changes in the industry, management accounting was replaced by risk as the central issue in internal control. The chapter concludes that management accounting and control systems have had a short career in financial services, yet might again attain more relevance for practice and research once the limitations of risk management, like the neglect of strategic risks and the difficulties of grasping operational risks, are fully realized.