We had another fine evening at the Financial Services Club the other night, debating customer focus in banking: where is it? with a debate between: Owen Woodley, Managing Director, Retail Banking, Lloyds Banking Group; Derek French, Head of the Campaign for Community Banking Services (CCBS); and Anthony Thomson, co-Founder Metro Bank and Atom Bank. Owen…
I organised a fascinating dinner focused upon what banks could learn from retailers the other night. As the evening transpired, various thoughts popped into my head and felt it worth recording them here. On the one hand, we are in awe of technology retail brands, especially Amazon; on the other, retailers have no idea about…
Speaking at a recent conference about the Bank of 2020, I started to get a little edgy. The moderator was asking repeatedly about The Next Big Thing, and that mobile devices seemed to be about it. Where’s the next major technology revolution going to come from? she asked. Isn’t there anything on the horizon we should be talking about…
Building on yesterday’s discussion of Marmite banking, it’s not a simple question of should we be digital? nor a question of where does digital sit? but a question of all digital. Those who ask the first two questions are thinking of digital banking as a channel; those who get the last point, understand. For example,…
Bearing in mind that we have Financial Services Club Nordic Region, as I left the Stockholm meeting last week I picked up a fascinating book at the airport about the Nordic countries. Called The Almost Nearly Perfect People by Michael Booth, it caught my attention with facts like Denmark actually has brothels with animals (seven percent…
The soon to launch TSB flotation was announced the other day to general silence. Who wants to buy into a bank or, rather, who wants to buy into a rebranded Lloyds bank? With Lloyds’ shares faring reasonably well these days, TSB is going to be an interesting operation. Running on Lloyds’ systems, it states that…
I wanted to give up talking about bankers being jailed, fined, sued and sanctioned, but during my investigations into background issues over this week's Credit Suisse fine, I stumbled across an article I had missed in Germany's Spiegel that is pretty interesting and crucial reading. As a result, I've decided to share this essential reading here….
Talking about job losses in the City reminded me of a comment a colleague made: "if we had delivered on all the headcount savings our bank has been promised from technology change, we would not have any staff in this bank anymore". Interesting and, during our conversation, I followed up with: "we never get the…
