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May 17, 2011

Government to give us a grand

Since the Royal Wedding, there's not been much good news in banking but today is a positive day. What could be positive about banks and banking? The fact that there is a growing recognition that not all is foul in the pond of finance. For example, there is the great news today that the government…

May 16, 2011

The Future of Retail Payments

So last week I felt honoured to be invited by the European Central Bank (ECB) to present at their conference on the future of retail payments. An audience of the great and the good turned up, and I was the last presenter of five panellists at the last session of the last day. Obviously, this…

May 13, 2011

Will mobile carriers really leave the business of banking to banks?

I find it funny to think about the lengthy discussions of mobile that takes place these days at all the banking and payments conferences I go to. The banks talk about a mobile payments ecosystem and how they have to work closely with carriers, handset manufacturers, retailers, merchants and more to achieve share of this…

May 12, 2011

How the new bank will win

In the last of my explorations of building a new bank, here's why the new bank will win. One of the biggest things that constrains existing banks is their past. They were created over a century ago to manage retail transactions in branches over the counter with human tellers and, to a large extent, this…

May 11, 2011

Creating a bank that makes money

So how are we going to make money in this brand new bank? This is the toughest question as it’s quite easy to make money in finance by focusing upon rate churn. Just offer lower interest rates on loans and credit cards and higher interest rates on savings and investments. This is the approach that…

May 10, 2011

Creating a cool and fair bank

Interesting reaction to yesterday’s kick-off about a new bank, with the responses being in three buckets: where’s the customer focus, how are you going to make money and what about the small business (SME) client? I’ll address those through the week, but want to start with the first as it strongly relates to culture. The…

May 10, 2011

PPI vultures and ambulance chasers

No sooner does the BBA announce that the banks will not fight the PPI battle, resulting in calls for recent FSClub keynote guest Angela Knight to resign as it could cost the industry up to £8 billion, than the vultures appear with one-page ads in the UK national newspapers … … nothing like capitalising on someone…

May 9, 2011

So how would you build a new bank?

If we were creating a bank today, how would we create it? This is a question that comes up regularly and I haven’t tried to answer it for a while, but thought I’d give it a go this week, as it’s timely. The reason it’s timely is that the last time I asked such a…

May 6, 2011

Customers need coaching, not channels

Building on yesterday’s blog, I was talking today about how banks deliver new channels to customers today. It is often not the best, as referenced earlier this week with the cumbersome way mobile apps turning customers off due to the way a bank delivers such service. If security, sign-on and opening of the new channel…

May 4, 2011

There is no revolution in banking

I think I had one of my unusual spouts of cynicism yesterday when, after realising that mobile and contactless and social is all the rage in banking, none of it is really hitting the mark yet. And, for all the talk about revolutions in banking, new models of banking, new ways of banking, new players…