Shaping the future of finance
This week saw the first discussions of a possible sale of Northern Rock back into the private sector. This is the bank that signalled the real start of the credit crisis when it went under during the summer of 2007 and had to be nationalised. Interestingly, the press have all started speculating who is going…
We had an excellent presentation from Giles Andrews, CEO of Zopa, at the Financial Services Club this week. Giles follows on the tradition of Zopa presenting to the Club, started by their late founder Richard Duvall in 2005 and former CEO James Alexander in 2008. What intrigues me about Zopa is how their business is…
Building on the theme that First Direct works as a bank without branches, why isn’t Santander working as a bank with branches. In the UK, Santander is rapidly acquiring branch footprint having taken over Abbey, Alliance & Leicester, Bradford & Bingley and, more recently, a further 318 branches from Royal Bank of Scotland. Santander is…
After a dinner meeting with First Direct (FD) at the FSClub last Monday; an interview with Paul Say, CMO of First Direct; last week concluded with a blogoblast between me, Brett King and Visible Banking with Matt Colebrook, CEO of FD. Anyone would think they were paying me to advertise their business which, just to…
Just got a really interesting survey from Deloitte looking at the future of financial services. The document is based upon a survey of 200 industry execs, and garners their views across a broad brush of areas. Interestingly 89% of those surveyed believe their firm survived the crisis as expected or better than expected. I expect…
It surprises me how often I find Spanish banks surprise me. First, BBVA launch the first really cool Bank 2.0 apps two years ago. Then Caja Navarra launches a fantastic hybrid Zopa-Bank styled P2P lending service. More recently, Santander created a really interesting head office campus full of robots. And now Banco Sabadell is one…
Going back to the idea that a bank could offer a widget-based business model of functionality and that everything these days is free, makes me realise exactly what tomorrow’s bank will look like. The thought struck me yesterday when I took my brother-in-law’s lad to see Clash of the Titans – more my thing than…
Thanks to Andrew Carrier's tweet for spotting this brilliant story in Gizmodo about Grupo Santander's Head Office in Santander City, Spain. Gizmodo liked the fact they have wee little robots running around guiding visitors around their massive HQ. Their HQ “is so damn big and confusing to navigate that you'll desperately need these multilingual robots…
