I’ve recently been interviewing a series of innovators and challengers in the banking system, and will publish an interview here on a regular basis with these visionaries. In the first of The Finanser Interviews we talk to Mark Mullen, CEO and Co-Founder of Atom Bank and former CEO of First Direct. Atom Bank is a…
There’s one bank I regularly visit, which have their values emblazoned over their reception. These values are: Respect Integrity Service Excellence Stewardship … or RISES for short. It’s nice, but I always have this cynical little buddy on my shoulder, shouting in my ear: “do you think they mean it?” The problem with the things…
I was going to keep quiet during this holiday week but, in the spirit of selfishness, I’m going to post a few blog entries about the Ukraine. Ukraine is a country I’ve not visited before, but was invited to fly over just before Christmas to run a discussion with Privatbank, the largest retail and commercial…
Someone was attacking the premise of digital bank change the other day, by claiming it only refers to consumer banking. Nothing is changing in corporate or investment banking, they claimed. Wrong. All areas of financial processes, products and services are being attacked by some new start-up company somewhere. I realise this every day when I…
As mentioned earlier this week, whilst in Turkey I visited with BKM, the interbank clearing system for low value payments. Owned by the largest 10 banks in Turkey, BKM opened for business in 1990 and now processes half of the transactions in the country. The other half are run on a 'as on-us' basis on…
I recently chaired a dinner in Turkey. Turkey is one of the hotbeds for retail bank innovation, alongside Poland, in Europe (assuming you count Turkey as European). It was in Turkey that I first saw a strong and concerted push into contactless payments. Remember this ad for Garanti Bank: It was in Turkey that I…
I really enjoyed the presentations in Oslo, particularly the case studies by Nordea and ValYou. Nordea spoke about their experiences with social media usage. This, in itself, is fascinating as just a few years ago no bank spoke about social media in finance. Now, I am building case studies about how banks see this as…
I really enjoyed the presentations in Oslo, particularly the case studies by Nordea and ValYou. Nordea spoke about their experiences with social media usage. This, in itself, is fascinating as just a few years ago no bank spoke about social media in finance. Now, I am building case studies about how banks see this as…
I’ve written lots about USAA and First Direct as leaders in new media. Both are financial firms without branches and both are loved by their customers. The key thing that differentiates both institutions is that they recognise they exist as a remote engagement and hence truly understand the art of creating digital relationships. By way…
