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Oct 5, 2012

Money and rumpy pumpy

A while ago David Birch, he of the geek #1 fame, said to me that all new forms of commerce are created by games, girls and gambling, and the more I think about it, the more true I see this becomes. This is particularly the case as gaming through mobile is becoming a massive market,…

Oct 4, 2012

A few billion reasons for attending #innotribe, Osaka

It’s getting nearer and nearer to Osaka and SIBOS, so it’s time for a SIBOS Osaka blog entry. I’m attending as part of the innotribe stream. Innotribe is in its fourth year at SIBOS, and has matured from a sideshow sect to a mainstream part of the conference. Having said that, I still get people…

Sep 24, 2012

The similarities between internet blocks and trade sanctions

I spent last week in the Middle East, travelling the region and seeing some sights as well as meeting many banks from across the region. As always, it’s an interesting space and place, full of Eastern promise as they say. Right now a lot of the discussion has been around the reactions to the trade…

Sep 21, 2012

What Star Trek tells us about banking

For years, I’ve been a fan of Star Trek, and have used their innovations in many presentations, but I’ve always wondered: how come there’s no money on the Star Ship Enterprise? Is everything free? Not exactly. My supposition was that the future world of Star Trek, bearing in mind that it’s set in the 24th…

Sep 20, 2012

Banks spend billions on risk management IT, but is IT working?

I was chairing a conference about risk and regulation today, and opened with the view the it is the culture of banking that needs to change. You can force the change through regulation, but if banks really want to be able to prosper post this crisis, then it needs cultural reform. And it’s not about…

Sep 19, 2012

The Financial Services Club Season, London, Q4 2012

We are pleased to announce details of our Winter Season of meetings of the Financial Services Club, London. If you would like to attend any of the meetings, please go to the fsclub.net and register. Tuesday, September 25 2012 Alex : 25 years of satirising the City Charles Peattie and Russell Taylor, creators of…

Sep 17, 2012

Banks biggest opportunities lie in emerging markets

I just received a report from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) on new bank models based upon different styles of banking in emerging markets. According to the report, the BRIC economies and their brethren will account for 35% of global assets by 2016, up from 24% today and just 10% in 2004. Emerging market banks are growing…

Sep 14, 2012

The World’s Global Language is English

I started another debate yesterday after saying that English is the global language. It is. It is not the largest spoken language – that’s Mandarin Chinese – but it is the largest global language spoken across borders thanks to the internet. English is spoken as a second or foreign language by an estimated 950 million…

Sep 13, 2012

STP will only happen if it has a regulatory mandate

I didn’t mean to make this a series of articles, but it has become one. After discussing TQM and BPR, then getting into STP, today it is the turn of ISO. It’s not actually me having a pop at ISO, but the fact that discussions have been on-going about STP for so long, and now I…

Sep 12, 2012

Have banks lost IT?

Further to yesterday’s dialogue around TQM, I got into a conversation with a couple of folks about the fact that we don’t have real STP, Straight Through Processing, in most financial firms. One senior manager said that he had started focusing upon STP back in the 1970s and couldn’t believe that, thirty years later, we…