Blog · Board and management reporting · Investment banking
The ten coverage KPIs an investment bank should run on, each with its formula, the export it comes from and what it tells you: share of client fee wallet, pitch to mandate conversion, coverage recency by wallet, league table position against client wallet, senior contact breadth, product penetration per client, revenue concentration, pipeline of mandated and pitched deals, coverage officer transitions, and return on balance sheet committed. Also the three measures most banks miss, the figures to drop, the identities, and who owns what.
An investment bank's clients pay fees a few times a year, to a small number of banks, for work that is pitched long before it is mandated. The measures that matter show how much of each client's fee wallet the bank takes, which pitches convert, and whether senior people are in front of the clients whose wallet is largest.
| # | Measure | Formula | Export | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Share of client fee wallet | Bank's fees from the client ÷ client's estimated total fees paid, trailing 3 years, by product | Revenue ledger; third-party fee data | Whether a client is a success or a missed opportunity |
| 2 | Pitch to mandate conversion | Pitches mandated to the bank ÷ pitches decided, by sector team and product | Pitch log | Which teams pitch well, and which pitch often |
| 3 | Coverage recency, wallet-weighted | Wallet of clients with a senior touch within cadence ÷ total covered wallet | CRM; wallet estimates | Whether the largest wallets are being seen |
| 4 | League table position against client wallet | Bank's rank by fees among its covered clients, by sector and product | Fee data; coverage list | Where the bank ranks where it matters |
| 5 | Senior contact breadth | Distinct C-suite and board contacts with activity in 12 months, per client | CRM | Relationships resting on one person |
| 6 | Products per client against norm | Products with revenue in 3 years ÷ norm for client type | Revenue ledger | Single-product relationships |
| 7 | Revenue concentration | Top twenty clients' share of fees; largest single client | Revenue ledger | Dependence on a few mandates |
| 8 | Pipeline: mandated and pitched | Expected fees by stage and expected close, with age in stage | Deal pipeline | What next year's revenue rests on |
| 9 | Transition continuity | Days from coverage change to first senior touch; wallet share before and after | CRM; coverage history | Clients lost in handovers |
| 10 | Return on balance sheet committed | Total client revenue ÷ capital committed to the client | Revenue ledger; lending book | Lending that did not bring the ancillary business |
Every one of these is computed per account, per coverage officer and sector team, and in total, and every one carries an identity that must hold before the table is shown.
Pitch conversion. Most pitch logs record that a pitch happened and never what became of it.
Wallet-weighted recency. Meeting counts reward activity with small clients who are easy to see.
Return on balance sheet. The loan was justified by future fees. Whether the fees came is seldom checked client by client.
A client paid an estimated $38 million in fees over three years. The bank earned $1.9 million: 5 percent. It has $150 million of lending committed to the client and pitched four times with no mandate. The last contact with the chief financial officer was eleven months ago; all recent activity is with the treasurer. The relationship looks active in the CRM and is failing on every measure that involves the wallet.
Meetings logged. Replace with wallet-weighted recency and contact seniority.
Market-wide league table rank, alone. Rank among covered clients is the commercial figure.
Pitches made. A cost until conversion is known.
| Table | Must hold |
|---|---|
| Wallet share | Client fees by product sum to the revenue ledger |
| Pitch conversion | Pitches = mandated to us + mandated elsewhere + not proceeded + open |
| Coverage | Every covered client has one lead officer |
| Return | Client revenue and capital tie to the finance totals |
A table whose identity fails is a table with a row missing or counted twice. It is not shown until it is fixed.
| Measure | Owner | Reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| Recency; senior contact breadth; transitions | Sector heads; head of coverage | Monthly |
| Pitch conversion; pipeline | Sector and product heads | Monthly |
| Wallet share; rank among clients; products per client | Head of coverage | Quarterly |
| Return on balance sheet; concentration | Head of coverage with finance and credit | Quarterly |
A measure with no owner is a metric, not a KPI; see KPI versus metric versus measure.
Ten measures from the revenue ledger, fee data, the pitch log and the CRM. Put the wallet under every one of them, and log what became of each pitch. Covirage computes all of them from the exports coverage teams already produce, files only, with the definitions stated and the identities checked. See Covirage for investment banks.
From licensed third-party fee data on announced and completed transactions, adjusted with what the coverage officer knows about unannounced business. It is an estimate, shown with its source, and it lags. It is still the only denominator that says whether a client paying the bank two million is a success or a missed opportunity.
A prepared proposal delivered to a decision-maker on a specific transaction or idea, logged with date, product, team and the eventual outcome: mandated to us, mandated elsewhere, not proceeded. Without the outcome field, conversion cannot be computed, and the bank cannot tell which teams pitch well and which pitch often.
A league table ranks the bank across the whole market. What matters commercially is rank among the clients it covers and has lent to. A bank that is eighth in a sector overall can be second among its own clients, or fifteenth; the second is a coverage problem no market-wide table reveals.