Innovation

This week has been fascinating with lots of discussions about branch versus no branch and financial advisor versus product seller. I was going to leave it at that, but feel one final blog post worthy of discussion and this is about the role of social media. We all talk about Facebook and Twitter in the…

I’ve blogged about the cash machine of the future before, with BBVA coming up with the idea of side-facing screens. Very nice too. Recently I saw some other variations of the cash machine, such as the new video ATMs being rolled out by banks such as Dollar Bank in America. And I thought ATM stood…

Someone made the comment that I would not receive any business from the five banks named yesterday with the biggest mistakes, so I thought I would rectify that by picking on five good things that banks are doing. It’s harder to find, because it is less reported, but there are a number of banks that…

I liked what Hillary Clinton said about data in yesterday's blog: “Data not only measures progress, it inspires it.” The reason I liked it is that it brought me back to the basics of what I do in banking: data leverage. There’s an old chart we used to knock around about data creating power: The…

Professor Michael Mainelli and Ian Harris (see bio's at end of blog entry) are regular guests of the Financial Services Club, and were invited back to close the London season of meetings with an engaging discussion about the Price of Fish. You may wonder what anything in banking has to do with The Price of…

There’s a buzz that’s started about Facebook banking asCommonwealth Bank of Australia and ICICI Bank get into Facebook banking apps, with Citibank fast to follow. What’s going on? Originally, we all though Facebook would take over bank functions through stealth creep via Facebook credits. Facebook credits are in fact worth around $1.5 billon a year…

And so to my final blog piece about Re|source 2012: Bill Clinton’s speech. Source: Getty Images What can you say about the man, the legend? The man who has felt more ladies knicker elastic than Marks & Spencer’s head underwear tester. No, that’s not important. You know, I was amazed about the reverence, excitement and…

I’ve talked a lot on this blog about P2P or social lending, mainly because I’ve been involved with Zopa since its launch and followed its siblings: Boober, Smava, Prosper, Lending Club, Ratesetter, Cashare, Loanio … Suffice to say there is a world of direct social lending out there and it’s now big business (Zopa recently gained…