Uncategorized

Jun 5, 2015

Hampered by heritage … or just an old bank dinosaur?

I spent a long time talking with banks in Turkey yesterday, and realised that my message is off mark with some markets. This arose when one of the banks told me they had just been to America to visit with banks there, and see how they were becoming digital. Apparently most of the American banks…

May 28, 2015

Can we stop the branch versus no-branch debate purleeze?

The branch discussion is a perennial favourite I know, but there’s one thing that is rarely discussed by the ‘no branch’ proponents: culture, demographics, psychographics and geographics. It’s like they say: “there will be no branches in the future, make it so”. I guess that’s because the anti-branch community are (a) over 35, (b) digital…

May 14, 2015

Brett King’s Moven 4.0 wins Best in Show at Finovate

I've been involved in Brett King's new venture, Moven, since its inception and was pleased to see the new renovated version won Best in Show at Finovate yesterday in San Jose. In a key announcement, Moven has partnered with Accenture to roll out their capabilities worldwide and, in what many are referring to as Bank…

Apr 24, 2015

Rip it up and start again …

I’m having so many conversations about so much stuff that my head is spinning these days. Fintech, digital, transformation, change … it seems to be on the lips of everyone I meet. Yet the one thing that stands out is that it’s not necessarily happening. This was brought home to me as I sat on…

Apr 8, 2015

The reports of my bank’s death are greatly exaggerated

There are a number of debates that pop-up regularly including the war on cash, the end of the branch and the death of banking. The last one I haven’t blogged about much because it’s irrelevant, but I’ll blog about it today as there are two camps of thought: incumbents and new entrants; and today’s blog…

Mar 26, 2015

Corporate bankers … do you need to wake up?

So I’m talking with a group of corporate bankers and the conversation goes into the normal alleyway. This alleyway is the one that says: “we are corporate bankers and will not be disrupted”. The conversation goes something like: So all the hot and sexy stuff with Fintech is in the consumer space. It’s retail and…

Mar 20, 2015

Why the mobile ecosystem just became easy

I had a good chat about the mobile financial ecosystem today. Maybe a good example of that ecosystem is represented below: What this portrays is that it’s complicated. There’s a lot of players doing a lot of things and the bank has to herd cats to make it work. What’s interesting though is that this…

Mar 19, 2015

Will Facebook and Apple Pay kill Visa and MasterCard?

So Facebook announced clarification of plans to rollout Facebook Pay, an easy way to pay friends through Facebook using your debit card. They had considered credit cards, but want to avoid fraud and risk and felt the debit card is the way to go. Initially US-based, the service will gradually be released worldwide. Here are…

Mar 12, 2015

UK Financial Inclusion Report Recommends 22 Things For 2020 (Some For Banks)

Yesterday the UK’s Financial Inclusion Commission published their report on Financial Inclusion for the UK. The Financial Inclusion Commission is an independent body of experts and parliamentarians who came together to put financial inclusion back on the political agenda ahead of the 2015 General Election. The Commission set out to: take stock of the extent of…

Mar 9, 2015

After the glitch, RBS closes GTS (or how a global bank becomes a national one)

I was surprised to see friend of the Financial Services Club Carole Berndt leave Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) for Australian shores in January (actually Hong Kong with ANZ). Even though she’s an Aussie, the surprise was that Carole had only moved to RBS to shake up their Global Transaction Services (GTS) business the year before,…