Uncategorized

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,…

Feb 26, 2015

How are banks reacting to FinTech?

After blogging about how hot Fintech is, I stumbled across this article by Avinash Swamy (HT to Bradley Leimer), and asked Avinash if I could place this on the blog as it shows the other side of the coin about how banks are reacting to Fintech threats and opportunities. Avinash kindly agreed, so read on …….

Feb 19, 2015

How much profit does a bank make from your bank account?

How much profit does a bank make per annum on a typical retail bank deposit account? It’s a simple question. What is the total revenue a bank generates from the average retail bank account – the costs? Do you know? Does your bank? I’m not so sure, and it’s a conundrum that drives to the…

Feb 12, 2015

In the age of the internet, is it the poor who will be poorer?

Here’s a good question for you: if cars self-drive, what happens to motor insurance? The reason I ask the question is that I saw this really cool app in Ukraine from Privatbank last year that allows me to drive into the gas station and refuel my car, without having to open the door. So what you…

Feb 9, 2015

Another bank scandal [HSBC], another day

Is it just me, or is it the media that makes out bankers are a slime pool swirling cesspit of scum? The reason I ask is that there seems to be non-stop headlines of fiddling bankers doing dirty deeds. The latest of these is the tax-cheating bank HSBC, who helped clients avoid tax. Wow,…

Feb 6, 2015

Why banks are hated and what to do about it

I often find headlines around the world that banks are hated, and was reminded of this today when Australian website The Conversation had the headline: Why do people hate bankers? No, really… The website cites research that bankers do not make excess profits and are not overpaid, but are hated due to being big and…

Feb 5, 2015

The future of Visa and other card schemes

Someone asked me yesterday: what do you think will happen to the card schemes in the future? I hadn’t thought about it much lately, but suddenly realised that the card schemes face a real melting pot of change. The last time I had talked about Visa and MasterCard in any depth was a while ago…

Feb 4, 2015

Killer blow to PayPal? Facebook powered by Apple Pay

So Apple has just announced record Q4 profits, and we all go ooh and aah, but I went: what’s happening with Apple Pay? After calling Apple Pay a winner two months ago, several people claimed it would fail (although many have personal stakes for saying so). I called it because of the sheer size and power…

Feb 3, 2015

The future ain’t what it used ta be

We were having a debate on twitter, me and a few of my fintech pals, when one of them posted a link to this blog. The blog is on the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) website and written by Rishad Tobaccowala (great name!), and provides a view of 5 insights and 3 predictions from Davos. The…

Feb 2, 2015

In strategic change programs, don’t assume anything

I was running a workshop for a bank the other day and asked the group: “what are the toxic assumptions in the bank that will stop it from succeeding to change?” The resultant list was fascinating and long and, to give you a flavour of what the group came up with, I’ve bucketed them into…