Uncategorized

Speaking of corporates being from Venus and banks from Mars, one of the biggest dilemmas a bank seems to undergo is where to put and how to define small to medium enterprises (SMEs). I’ve seen several banks alternate between treating SMEs as part of their retail business and then ping-ponging them into the commercial banking…

Speaking of corporates being from Venus and banks from Mars, one of the biggest dilemmas a bank seems to undergo is where to put and how to define small to medium enterprises (SMEs). I’ve seen several banks alternate between treating SMEs as part of their retail business and then ping-ponging them into the commercial banking…

On Wednesday 22nd June, we are running a private dinner meeting of the Financial Services Club in London to launch the results of our recent survey: "Are payments infrastructures fit for purpose?" which was completed by 350 payments professionals worldwide. As a taste of what came out of this, respondents were asked to take a view…

It amazed me to see the back office of one of the largest operations in the world in action today. Yes, I’m talking about Amazon. A place you would think would be a seamless operation of high technology but, in reality, is a bit of a mess. I mean sure, from an external view, it…

  June 9th 2065 We just celebrated grandad's hundredth birthday. He was a banker, and he recorded a speech for us to play to the family. We decided to share his speech as it captures a moment of history that many of us might forget. Hope you like it … I cannot believe that I’m…

It’s fairly obvious that the less you have of something you want, the more you want it; whilst the more you have, the less you need it. It’s not true of everything I guess as, for example, I don’t have a great deal of tomatoes and don’t want more of them because I don’t like…

One of the questions that came up in Abu Dhabi is that Social Media is great, but what’s it go to do with the CIO?  CIOs are the main audience here at MEFTEC and media is a marketing thing isn’t it? This got me thinking, as most of the social media presentations do focus upon…

OK, down to business. What has the failure of government to regulate the internet got to do with banks? Quite a lot actually as governments and banks are closely intertwined, as demonstrated throughout this financial crisis. Banks control economies and governments need economies to run efficiently, hence the two go hand in hand. And just…