One of the more outspoken reactions to my post on payday firms came from Wonga. Not surprising as my original headline was that “Wonga will wrestle with regulators”, and they will as the markets are pretty unregulated today. A point I made last Friday. I also mentioned last Friday that the original reason I wrote…
One of the more outspoken reactions to my post on payday firms came from Wonga. Not surprising as my original headline was that “Wonga will wrestle with regulators”, and they will as the markets are pretty unregulated today. A point I made last Friday. I also mentioned last Friday that the original reason I wrote…
Further to my write-up about Wonga the other day, I have been contacted by author and campaigner Steve Perry, who has been on the wrong side of the payday loans industry. Now don’t get me wrong. I am NOT against payday loans firms or their operations (I actually admire Wonga's technology ops). I AM against the…
Further to my write-up about Wonga the other day, I have been contacted by author and campaigner Steve Perry, who has been on the wrong side of the payday loans industry. Now don’t get me wrong. I am NOT against payday loans firms or their operations (I actually admire Wonga's technology ops). I AM against the…
We recently hosted Vernon Hill at the Financial Services Club. Vernon is the charismatic founder of Metro Bank UK and successful bank veteran in the USA, having built Commerce Bank from just one branch in the 1970s to a 435 branch behemoth that was sold for $8.5 billion in 2007. Vernon Hill was a fast-food…
This week saw the first discussions of a possible sale of Northern Rock back into the private sector. This is the bank that signalled the real start of the credit crisis when it went under during the summer of 2007 and had to be nationalised. Interestingly, the press have all started speculating who is going…
We had an excellent presentation from Giles Andrews, CEO of Zopa, at the Financial Services Club this week. Giles follows on the tradition of Zopa presenting to the Club, started by their late founder Richard Duvall in 2005 and former CEO James Alexander in 2008. What intrigues me about Zopa is how their business is…
Building on the theme that First Direct works as a bank without branches, why isn’t Santander working as a bank with branches. In the UK, Santander is rapidly acquiring branch footprint having taken over Abbey, Alliance & Leicester, Bradford & Bingley and, more recently, a further 318 branches from Royal Bank of Scotland. Santander is…
After a dinner meeting with First Direct (FD) at the FSClub last Monday; an interview with Paul Say, CMO of First Direct; last week concluded with a blogoblast between me, Brett King and Visible Banking with Matt Colebrook, CEO of FD. Anyone would think they were paying me to advertise their business which, just to…
Just got a really interesting survey from Deloitte looking at the future of financial services. The document is based upon a survey of 200 industry execs, and garners their views across a broad brush of areas. Interestingly 89% of those surveyed believe their firm survived the crisis as expected or better than expected. I expect…
