Develop at least further five (5) realistic assumptions that you can add to the issues and problems expressed. These might typically be related to management, leadership, change processes, managerial information systems, technology, competitors, employees, customers and so on. Use at least two (2) sentences to describe each assumption (200 words).

Open with Example 8.2 Northern Rock Until 2007, Northern Rock was seen by insiders, more than 100 per cent mortgages because they customers and many in the wider financial community provided surplus funds they could use to furnish their as a successful financial services company offering new properties or for some other purpose, such as the mortgage products to the UK market and providing a purchase of a new car. portfolio of savings products. Initially, like other Those in Northern Rock who were responsible for traditional building societies, Northern Rock relied on managing the agenda for change appeared to focus its savings products to fund much of its lending but, their attention on opportunities for generating profit over time, it started to source more and more of its and failed to pay much attention to potential threats, funding through wholesale borrowing on capital Adopting a SWOT approach might have provided a markets, bonds and securitized loans. These new diagnostic framework that would have helped those sources of funding provided a platform for expansion caught up in the (apparent) runaway success of the and the development of a new profitable business business be alert to potential threats alongside the model that involved lending higher risk mortgages opportunities that appeared to dominate their thinking. products (loans of more than 100 per cent of the Some signs of potential threats were there but they property value) and making these loans available to a appeared to have litile impact on the thinking of those wider customer base, including some customers who, leading the business. These included an increase in by traditional industry standards, would not have been consumer debt and the possibility that this was judged as able to afford the repayments. While affecting the Northern Rock customer demographic property values continued to increase, this business more than that of most other high-street lenders, model was very successful and Northern Rock associated concerns about affordability, and concerns continued to expand Customers were attracted by the about the future growth of property values