Finextra community home

Devil's Advocate

Roger Elwell - Yes Please - Colchester | 13/09/2011 | 2592 views

Sowing The Seeds Of The Next Housing Bubble

Here in the UK, mortgage providers are already sowing the seeds of the next housing bubble. I read in this weekend’s Telegraph about a product innovation that is ‘designed to help first-time buyers get on the housing ladder’. Expecting to read about how house prices would continue to fall to affordable levels, and thus enable pe... Tags: Risk & regulation, Retail bankingGroup: Innovation in Financial Services

Roger Elwell - Yes Please - Colchester | 24/08/2011 | 3339 views | 3 comments

Charging for Use of ATMs

I think the move to charging certain people for use of other banks' ATMs is deplorable - and we have been here before, only to see it dropped. Some of us remember that the introduction of ATMs was driven not only by customer convenience, but also by cost cutting initiatives. It was deemed cheaper to dispense by machine than it was to do so over t... Tags: Cards, Retail bankingGroup: Transaction Banking

Roger Elwell - Yes Please - Colchester | 24/08/2010 | 3639 views | 1 comment

Card Glitch Shows Why Cash and Cheques Should Stay

The problem that Barclays had last weekend shows why it is that cash and cheques should stay for the foreseeable future. At least the handing over of pieces of paper and coinage isn't hit by a systems failure like the one they experienced. Of course, most people don't carry much in the way of cash around with them these days, and they wouldn't ha... Tags: Cards, Retail bankingGroup: Online Banking

Roger Elwell - Yes Please - Colchester | 15/07/2010 | 3565 views | 1 comment

Car Insurance Technology Not Joined Up

I'd love someone to explain why it seems impossible these days to get any degree of consistency from organisations, especially when they have so much computing power available to them. I recently got my car renewal letter and, like many people do these days, I decided to do a market sweep. Of course, this is easier today because of the innovation... Tags: Cards, Retail bankingGroup: Online Banking

Roger Elwell - Yes Please - Colchester | 24/06/2010 | 3550 views | 3 comments

The Death of the Meeting: I Blame Technology

It was in a meeting the other day that I finally realised that I am getting old. As I made my weary way home, I mused on this sudden insight and found myself reminiscing about the old days, when meetings were meetings, and not a collection of people gathered in a room devoting over 50% of their time to a call received on their mobile phone, or a m... Tags: Cards, PaymentsGroup: Transaction Banking