Uncategorized

Sep 16, 2014

Who am I paying?

I received a text alert about a possible fraud last night. The alert asked me to ring my credit card provider ASAP to verify the payment, so I did. “Hello”, I said after entering my name, date of birth, mother’s maiden name and inside leg measurement, “you alerted me to a possible fraud”. “Yes we…

Sep 15, 2014

What is a bank?

So I had a meeting the other day where we started arguing about banks and what banks really are these days. The traditional view is that banks are those that offer deposit accounts and have a bank licence. They are recognised by regulators as banks, and governments oversee their activities. That view is no longer…

Sep 11, 2014

Infographic: 2014 – the year of encryption

Just got an email from egress talking about people's attitudes to security. Purely because it's interesting and I've got a lot on the table today, I though it worth sharing with y'all. Hope you like it.

Sep 4, 2014

Money can’t buy me love … but it comes close

Throughout all my years of dealing with banks, 99% of the people I meet are downright honest, good to share a glass of wine with, people. They work hard, are customer focused and have the best intentions. Their only challenge is their management team and culture. On the one hand, some believe they are doing…

Formula-1-chief-executive-Bernie-Ecclestone

Sep 3, 2014

Finance and banking in 2035

Looking at the long term, I tried to think about the effects of today's changes in the political, economic, social and technological spheres would have by 2035. Obviously, there are pure guesses and the list is only a starter for ten, but here are a few clear things that seem likely: Investment banks will not…

Sep 1, 2014

Customers no longer fit into neat, age-based demographics

Presenting at a conference recently, the opening keynote began by saying: “we are living with six generations of human, who all have different tastes and needs”. Yep. In marketing speak, he classified them as: Traidtionallists (the World War II Generation); Baby boomers; Generation X; Generation Y; Millennials; and Generation C. I hadn’t heard of Generation C before,…

Aug 28, 2014

Part Four: Banking on Demand – the Component-Based Bank

For the past three blog entries, I have tried to convey how the old world of products, processes and people – or manufacturing, operations and distribution if you prefer – is being re-engineered by technologies. Cloud-based products and services can deliver the bank products anywhere, anytime; open source processing via APIs allow those cloud-based products…

Aug 27, 2014

Part Three: Banking on Demand – the Customer Focused Bank

Building upon the previous two blog entries that discussed the new business models in banking based upon products (cloud-shared leveraging data analytics) and processing (real-time via open sourced APIs), we now arrive at the customer layer (mobile and social). Seen as the most important layer, as this is where the relationship between provider and…

Aug 27, 2014

Part Three: Banking on Demand – the Customer Focused Bank

Aug 26, 2014

Part Two: Banking on Demand – the Open Sourced Bank

So I started this series of blogs by talking about the age of the Digital Bank and that it starts with these basics: products are cloud-based components that leverage data in the back office to be relevant to the customer in the front office. Building block one: cloud and big data. Building block two: APIs…