I hate acronymns, but these are three good ones: TSC is the Treasury Select Committee; ICB is the Independent Commission on Banking; and UXB is an UneXploded Bomb. UXB is something that the TSC just laid for the ICB. By way of explanation, the TSC published a 100-page report titled “Competition and choice in retail banking”,…
OK, so I said that banks would absolutely not be disintermediated last week, and it sparked some interesting debate and dialogue. A few folks were incredulous that I could say this; others thought it made eminent sense; some noted that the movement of money could be disintermediated, but the holding of money could not; whilst…
I was involved in a tweminar yesterday organised by Karen Hsu of Informatica, and in conversation with Nancy Atkinson of Aite Group. This conversation was all about payments and specifically SEPA, ISO20022, interoperability and more. It is also the second tweminar I've participated in – the first was with First Direct's CEO - and they are incredibly difficult…
A good discussion yesterday about government’s powers to influence banks and control their behaviours. The conversation went something along the lines of the following. Governments are working hard to create unified systems across borders for commerce. An example is SEPA and the PSD, MiFID and the Lisbon Agenda of the European Commission. This is something…
Investment banking has had a rocky year all year. Pilloried by politics, public and the media, the investment banker is currently about as popular as a Vampire at a Blood Bank … not a bad analogy as the refrain all year has been about that giant Vampire Squid that is known as Goldman Sachs. Goldmans…
So, there are a lot of things we’re juggling around with in the payments arena, from real-time to TARGET2 to SEPA to SWIFT ISO20022 to mobile to contactless to biometrics and more. I guess I can summarise this area best by using the results from this year’s payments survey because the last section of the…
Our last meeting of the year at the Financial Services Club featured Andrew Tyrie, Head of the Treasury Select Committee. The meeting was held in partnership with the Industry & Parliament Trust, and a good night was had by all. In a packed room, Andrew talked about the government’s challenges and his own varied…
On Tuesday last week the House of Commons Treasury Committee took evidence from Eric Daniels, Group Chief Executive, and Helen Weir CBE, Group Executive Director, Retail, Lloyds Banking Group Stephen Hester, Group Chief Executive, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Benny Higgins, Chief Executive, Tesco Bank It makes for interesting viewing, although long – you can…
“Now then Brasher, what’s all this I hear about a clampdown on bonuses?” Sir Winston Albert Grant, Chairman of MegaBank Corp (MBC) and generally known by his colleagues as WAG, roared across the table at Roger Hughes, the new Chief Compliance Officer for MBC. Roger was called Brasher by WAG because every time he came…
