Technology

In an interesting challenge to my own views, James Gardner at BankerVision posts a retort to the idea that social media and social networks are important to banks, by saying it’s all irrelevant … unless I’m mistaken. Based upon the reaction, I guess he’s trying to create a storm, and has managed to do so….

Speaking of Virgin Trains, I was subjected to an encounter with multichannel misery today which, although unrelated to banks, is worth recounting as we can always learn from good and bad service stories.   Virgin offers a train ticket that is cheaper if you book and prepay and print at home, than if you book…

I’ve been having problems printing tickets for a Virgin Train I’m travelling on today, so I called their call centre.  After going through the menu pick system, I got a message in an Indian voice stating: "Due to technical difficulties, we are unable to answer your call at the moment." I wondered if this is…

I’ve been having problems printing tickets for a Virgin Train I’m travelling on today, so I called their call centre.  After going through the menu pick system, I got a message in an Indian voice stating: "Due to technical difficulties, we are unable to answer your call at the moment." I wondered if this is…

I’ve spent the last few weeks wondering about the fallout from the Lehman Brothers collapse and the onward losses in the stock markets. With $2.5 trillion of losses estimated by the Bank of England amongst the banking community, and over $3 trillion pumped into the system so far, you do wonder about the long-term. However,…

I’ve spent the last few weeks wondering about the fallout from the Lehman Brothers collapse and the onward losses in the stock markets. With $2.5 trillion of losses estimated by the Bank of England amongst the banking community, and over $3 trillion pumped into the system so far, you do wonder about the long-term. However,…

I’ve spent the last few weeks wondering about the fallout from the Lehman Brothers collapse and the onward losses in the stock markets. With $2.5 trillion of losses estimated by the Bank of England amongst the banking community, and over $3 trillion pumped into the system so far, you do wonder about the long-term. However,…

A year ago, I talked about how unusable the Xiring terminals were and have seen loads of blogs and commentaries about how impractical these terminals are in everyday life since then.  Thank goodness Visa has now integrated one-time passwords into their cards.  Meanwhile, I'm stuck with UK banks who insist that we use these darned…

Yesterday I posed the question branch or internet, and made it an extreme choice. Everyone says you would never have such a stark choice, but there was reason in my madness and the reason is that we are caught in a wave of the second internet boom.  Are we in danger of repeating the mistakes…

Last year, I got into a long debate about investments in branches versus alternative channels, so I thought I would get into that debate again a year on … but with a twist.Today, if a bank does not have IP networking as the core wiring for the organisation, then they will miss a trick because…