The biggest news stories of the week include ...
- JPMorgan, Citigroup helped trigger Lehman collapse,
report argues - The Telegraph - London at centre of Lehman Brothers 'accounting
gimmick' - The Telegraph - Security fear over end of cheques - BBC
- Bernanke opposes plan to strip Federal Reserve of small
bank supervision role - The Telegraph - Bank charges: 'Banks should offer accounts that can't
go overdrawn' - The Telegraph - Turner eyes bank reform by November G20 meeting - The Independent
- Brown intervenes in European hedge fund dispute - The Times
- US bank regulation bill unveiled - BBC
And our biggest stories of the week are ...
Many of us get excited about new and different toys in the payments
world. We then use these illustrations of small change to make
allegations about big change. We speculate that everyone will be using
twitter for payments via PayPal’s core system within the next few
years, for example. But PayPal isn't that special.
It’s just cream on the cake.
So yesterday
I argued that PayPal and their brethren of social monies don’t
matter. It was like unleashing the sceptical banker that I know resides
deep within me, and it felt good. Then I got a dose of new reality vision (maybe due to so many comments
on yesterday’s piece) and it felt not so good, because PayPal and
their brethren really do matter. In fact, they matter a lot more than we think.
Sharks, Gorillas, Sloths and Cheetahs
In January, I wrote a blog post about competitive strategies, and the
Sharks versus the Jets of the Banking industry. This blog entry
developed into a short white paper that has just been published by
Hewlett-Packard. Get a free copy here.
Six months ago, I posted some cracking quotes about the crisis. I recently
saw the Power of Yes by David Hare (well worth a
viewing), and the programme has many more choice quotes to add to the
list. Here are some of my favourites ...
The new marketing segments of 2010
Thinking about millenials, or Gen Y as some call them, reminded me
of marketers wonderful ways of coming up with new terms for consumer
segments. Here's a few new ones: Wotofs, Minjers, Yolops and Yotops.
Thanks to the Italian blog Banca2.0, I stumbled across Dexia
Belgium’s marketing campaign to Gen Y that worked wonders almost a
year ago. The campaign is based around Dexia’s youth bank, Axion,
and the bank’s aim was to appeal to 15 to 30 year old
Belgian’s by highlighting music as the theme. But not just any old
music: web music.
USAA are an American provider of finance that started as an insurer for
military personnel, and now provides banking and full financial
servicing for America's forces. They are also the #1 firm in
America for Customer Service. To demonstrate this, Bloomberg has
selected America's best customer service providers since 2007 and 'no
other company has come close to achieving USAA's feat: a No. 1 or No. 2
spot for four years running'.
The Lehmans bits missing online
Lots and lots of coverage of the Lehmans shambles this week. You can read the whole 2,300+
page report if you want, but what is missing online are the wonderfully clever
pictures some of the papers included in their print reporting.
The classic article of last year "Inside the Great American Bubble Machine" by Matt
Tiabbi in Rolling Stone, where he coined the term 'vampire squid' in his
description of the bank Goldman Sachs, has been visualised in this
10-minute YouTube stream ...
The new Lloyds Bank ... or is that Lloyd Banks?
I thought that Lloyds Banking Group had suddenly had a change of
heart when I got a note offering me a Beamer, Benz or Bentley.
Obviously, the lending lines had opened and car loans is their new
focus. Then I realised that this is the title of Lloyd Banks debut single
...
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Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...
