Iraq Retail Banking Study: Rebuilding a Market Sizing Model from Scratch

Vipul took on a retail banking dynamics study for Standard Chartered in Iraq, a market with almost no reliable government data due to years of conflict. The initial brief was to understand how retail banking worked in the country, who the key players were, and what the growth dynamics looked like.

He began with a scoping phase, identifying key stakeholders across the Iraqi banking sector, including the National Bank, Irbil Bank, and Islamic Bank. He designed the primary research questionnaire covering demographics, average ticket sizes, customer profiles, and spending patterns, then reached out to middle managers, CXOs, and junior analysts on LinkedIn to collect responses.

On the secondary side, he pulled data from the World Bank and open data platforms, then attempted to build a market sizing model using both bottom-up and top-down approaches. The first model failed the pressure test when assumptions were checked against the qualitative insights from primary research. Rather than patching it, he went back to the data entirely, working through over a hundred search results and conducting additional executive interviews to find alternative data sources.

Rebuilding the Model

With the new data sources, he rebuilt the market sizing model from the ground up. He triangulated the quantitative figures against the primary research findings until the numbers held up under scrutiny. The rebuilt model aligned closely with the directional estimates the team had formed from qualitative insights.

He then assembled the full deliverable: market sizing, drivers and restraints, value chain analysis, Porter Five Forces, BCG matrix, competitor profiles, and client recommendations. He owned the QC process and turned the raw qualitative data from stakeholder interviews into a coherent narrative within the deck.