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Jul 14, 2011

Inside the Head of Transaction Banking

I was fascinated to hear the priorities and issues facing the head of transaction services in a major global bank this week. He doesn’t want to be named in public domain, so this is an anonymous interview and, in no particular order, here are his key areas of focus … In March 2011, our focus…

Jul 8, 2011

Why Wonga Will Wrestle With Regulators

I’ve talked a few times about Wonga and Pay Day Loan firms: Wonga: another web disruption for loans, February 2009 Need money fast? May 2010 An explosion of payday loan firms, February 2011 Poor are #1 prey for financial predators, June 2011 The last point picks up on the continual debate about such firms and their…

Jun 28, 2011

Are small firms retail or commercial propositions?

Speaking of corporates being from Venus and banks from Mars, one of the biggest dilemmas a bank seems to undergo is where to put and how to define small to medium enterprises (SMEs). I’ve seen several banks alternate between treating SMEs as part of their retail business and then ping-ponging them into the commercial banking…

Jun 28, 2011

Are small firms retail or commercial propositions?

Jun 17, 2011

ING: selling the rebels with a cause

I still remember fondly the BAI Show of 2008 where there were several key highlihgts. One of the biggest was the one-to-one interview with Arkadi Kuhlmann, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of ING Direct USA. At the time, Arkadi had just produced his book: “The Orange Code: How ING Direct Succeeded by Being a…

Jun 17, 2011

ING: selling the rebels with a cause

Jun 10, 2011

Are payments infrastructures fit for purpose?

On Wednesday 22nd June, we are running a private dinner meeting of the Financial Services Club in London to launch the results of our recent survey: "Are payments infrastructures fit for purpose?" which was completed by 350 payments professionals worldwide. As a taste of what came out of this, respondents were asked to take a view…

Jun 9, 2011

If Amazon was a bank

It amazed me to see the back office of one of the largest operations in the world in action today. Yes, I’m talking about Amazon. A place you would think would be a seamless operation of high technology but, in reality, is a bit of a mess. I mean sure, from an external view, it…

Jun 8, 2011

Oh, for them good old cheque days

June 9th 2065 We just celebrated grandad's hundredth birthday. He was a banker, and he recorded a speech for us to play to the family. We decided to share his speech as it captures a moment of history that many of us might forget. Hope you like it … I cannot believe that I’m…

Jun 6, 2011

Poor are #1 prey for financial predators

It’s fairly obvious that the less you have of something you want, the more you want it; whilst the more you have, the less you need it. It’s not true of everything I guess as, for example, I don’t have a great deal of tomatoes and don’t want more of them because I don’t like…