The Finanser’s Week: 18th March – 24th March 2013

Our biggest
stories of the past week are ...

Banks are just data vaults

There have been several themes I’ve explored on the blog
lately that are the foundations of my latest presentations: Mobile is irrelevant,
it’s the behaviours that are key Money is meaningless, it’s the data that is important
Capitalism is dead,... 

Running a bank as an
IT shop ... is the pain worth it?

I was sitting through a vendor presentation ... ... when a
slide popped up titled: industry pain points. It was an interesting slide about
the banking industry’s challenges with technology. The slide was divided into
four sections, the first of...

It's Thursday so the banks will open

Theo Ousalotmoney: OK guys, time to open the bank. 

Brancho Tellerous: Oxi (no) … we have no money. 

Theo: Waddya mean, we have no money? We are a bank? 

Tellerous: Yes sir, but we are a Cypriot Bank. 

Theo: So?...

Are consumers and corporates really that different?

I had a dinner recently where we debated the relevance of
real-time in banking. It was intriguing with the retail bankers saying that it
is a hygiene factor now to offer real-time as consumers expect and demand it,
whilst the...

The EU Financial Transaction Tax Directive: An overview

This is a guest post by Financial Services Club speaker
Laurens Vis, Managing Director of KAS Bank. The stakes are high. Directive
2008/7/EC, the Council Directive on a common system of Financial Transaction
Tax (FTT), is testing the resilience of...

The major general news stories of the past week include
...  

Co-op
Bank in £674m annual loss - BBC
The Co-operative Bank says it made a loss and will sell an insurance unit to
rescue a deal to take over some of Lloyds Banking Group's branches.

George
Obsorne 'wasted Whitehall time and created real economic costs' in last-minute
budget manipulation, says Institute for Fiscal Studies - The
Independent
George Osborne has been accused of wasting the time of Whitehall officials and
creating “real economic costs” for the country by the respected Institute for
Fiscal Studies think tank.

Cyprus
crisis: What happens next? - BBC
Cyprus scenarios: From euro exit to new Russian support

Visa
Europe $3bn sell-off to Americans is on the cards - The Independent
Visa Europe's owners are considering selling the credit-card company and
setting up a rival system across the Continent.

PayPal
expected to manage with upcoming MasterCard fees - Marketwatch
The frustration of credit-card network operators with PayPal and other
electronic-payment processors has reached a point where MasterCard will raise
its fees this summer on transactions handled by PayPal that run across the
MasterCard network

Cyprus
bailout: 'If the Russians leave, the island will be destroyed' - The
Independent
As the drama unfolded in the parliament building in Nicosia, thousands of
protesters assembled in nearby Lena Stylianou Square to express their disgust
at the situation Cyprus now finds itself in. Chanting “Troika get out!”, the
demonstrators were kept several hundred metres from parliament by riot barriers
and lines of

RBS
to spend £700m on improving branches - The Telegraph
State-backed Royal Bank of Scotland is to invest £700m between 2013 and 2016 in
improving its branches, as part of a continuing shift in focus towards its
domestic lending business.

Payments
Views - The Rise of the Smart Transaction - Payments News
Over on Payments Views, Glenbrook's Russ Jones blogs about the how the card
industry is starting to subdivide at the point of sale into two submarkets, one
being the “smart” transaction market and the other being the “basic”
transaction market. He explores how this trend is exemplified through solutions
from

HSBC
in new money laundering claims - BBC
Banking giant HSBC, which was hit with a US fine for money laundering last
year, is facing fresh accusations of illegal activity in Argentina.

Cyprus
government to take 10% of bank savers' deposits to pay off debt - Daily
Mail
Osborne vows to protect Britain's armed forces in Cyprus as cash machines are
EMPTIED and 60,000 British savers face losing millions in 10% bank account tax.

 

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