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Another interesting debate is what drives banks’ investments in technology? For years, it’s been cost reduction, cost avoidance, regulatory requirements for change, risk management and compliance, competitive imperatives and such like.  Not one of these talks about customer needs however. I’ve been a firm believer that banks rarely invest for revenue uplift and customer service. …

For some years there has been a lot of discussion about which brands consumers trust for banking.  Rather than banks, protagonists assert that it’s Apple who could win, as they have the #1 brand with millennials.  Alternatively it could just as easily be a Wal*Mart, Virgin, Google or someone else. For some years, I’ve joined…

I received a text alert about a possible fraud last night. The alert asked me to ring my credit card provider ASAP to verify the payment, so I did. “Hello”, I said after entering my name, date of birth, mother’s maiden name and inside leg measurement, “you alerted me to a possible fraud”. “Yes we…

So I had a meeting the other day where we started arguing about banks and what banks really are these days. The traditional view is that banks are those that offer deposit accounts and have a bank licence.  They are recognised by regulators as banks, and governments oversee their activities. That view is no longer…

Looking at the long term, I tried to think about the effects of today's changes in the political, economic, social and technological spheres would have by 2035.  Obviously, there are pure guesses and the list is only a starter for ten, but here are a few clear things that seem likely: Investment banks will not…

Presenting at a conference recently, the opening keynote began by saying: “we are living with six generations of human, who all have different tastes and needs”. Yep. In marketing speak, he classified them as: Traidtionallists (the World War II Generation); Baby boomers; Generation X; Generation Y; Millennials; and Generation C. I hadn’t heard of Generation C before,…