Opinion

I was asked a question about why a bank would change their core system the other day. There are lots of reasons why a bank would change their core system. Here’s my top five: Legacy constraints: this is the most obvious one, but it does not create a reason for changing a core system in…

Mint’s blog, a must-read for all bankers if you want to know what consumers top of mind priorities are, sent a post out yesterday titled: “David & Goliath: How Customers are Sticking it to the Big Banks”. It immediately caught my attention because the Huffington Post in the USA has been promoting the idea of…

I’m continually impressed and amazed by the speed of change in the technology of the investment markets. For example, last year was all talk about low latency and lit versus dark pools. This year, it’s all about private cloud-based services based upon colocation and proximity services. Next year, it will be all about real-time liquidity…

Thinking about the Halifax’s ads a bit more, some may say: “they are so bad, they’re good”, in a Shake & Vac sort of way (one of Britain’s most memorable and iconic ads – see end of blog entry if you want to see it). I disagree. The Halifax ads are just plain bad and…

After West Side Story, the Sharks got over the Jets and are now targeting the Gorillas. Actually nothing to do with music or film, we’re talking banks. Back in the 1950s you had large banks (Sharks) being run around by small banks (Jets) who were nimbler and quicker … so the large banks acquired them…

I’m sitting in the house. It’s snowing. Look. This is big news. We don't get snow in Britain anymore. Global warming saw to that. So when it's snowing, it's major news headlines. Non-stop BBC reports saying: "it's snowing". And so it's snowing, and Britain has stopped. Literally. Everything has closed down. We couldn't even get…