I was in an interesting debate yesterday about the future of banking, as usual, and the future of branches, yet again. It was all interesting stuff. Then one of the presenters – a design agency that created and designed the Apple stores – talked about designing branches for people, not money. He illustrated this with…
I just got a heads-up about an interesting project taking place in Citibank called Darbie. Being aware of the challenge of new start-ups like Simple and Square, Citi are concerned that they might be disintermediated from the customer relationship, as are most old guard banks. But rather than ignoring this threat, Citi has taken it…
The hardy perennial discussion of whether we need branches or not comes up again this week. It’s a regular debate on the blog and in the Financial Services Club, with various entries that are relevant to contribute towards the debate: To dump or not to dump the branch (2007) Branches Wanted: Dead or Alive? (2009)…
Following on from yesterday’s blog about the challenge of taking a vertically integrated bank and breaking it into pieces that can be assembled as part of an alternative service, such as a mobile app, reminded me of the build my own bank presentation from February 2009 (can this really be four years old already?). The thing is…
Following on from yesterday’s blog about the challenge of taking a vertically integrated bank and breaking it into pieces that can be assembled as part of an alternative service, such as a mobile app, reminded me of the build my own bank presentation from February 2009 (can this really be four years old already?). The thing is…
I was trying to find out about the UK Government's Funding for Lending Scheme and why it isn't working, and managed to meet a senior small business lending manager with one of the UK's largest retail banks. He spoke to me off the record, but here's a summary of the discussion. It's pretty enlightening. I've…
I was trying to find out about the UK Government's Funding for Lending Scheme and why it isn't working, and managed to meet a senior small business lending manager with one of the UK's largest retail banks. He spoke to me off the record, but here's a summary of the discussion. It's pretty enlightening. I've…
I went to a Policy Review Summit yesterday, focused upon rebuilding trust in the banking system. We’ve had a few of these meetings at the Financial Services Club, and have two more in May, and the discussion usually comes around to a number of core themes: customers trust their bank accounts to be safe, secure…
There are many places you can look to find leadership in the FinTech community. One of the most reliable sources is IDC’s annual FinTech100 listing if you want to find the leaders in finance and technology. The 2012 listing confirms FIS in top spot again with TCS, First Data and Cognizant all rising up the…
