Future Finance News Analysis

Finextra and Oracle have gathered together some of the industry's top thought leaders to assess the key trends and issues within transaction banking, regulations and retail banking. This group will analyse the latest news on upcoming regulations, new service offerings and industry issues shaping the new financial services landscape with regular blog posts, video interviews, webcasts debates and surveys.

Dan Barnes Writer at Information Corporation

Why banks shouldn't fear tax

Governments' aggressive approach to taxation is alternately punishing and rewarding financial services firms. The Swiss government is planning to abolish tax secrecy laws – what does that mean for Swiss banking? On Wednesday 29 May 2013 the Swiss government proposed to allow Swiss banks to disclose information to the US government. The proposal, if...

20 November 2013 /regulation /wholesale

Dan Barnes Writer at Information Corporation

The Big Wind-up

Plans to wind down banks that are too big to fail have at last been agreed but will not take effect until 2018. Italy's recent revelation about derivatives losses proves that there are still plenty of skeletons hidden in European Union (EU) cupboards. The recently reported conduct of bankers in Ireland at the start of the crisis has challenged the...

20 November 2013 /regulation /wholesale

Dan Barnes Writer at Information Corporation

Self-regulation leads to self-doubt

The European Commission (EC) is threatening to move setting of the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) to Paris, after the exposure of the current process as “the rate at which banks do not lend to each other” in the words of Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England. An interbank benchmark system must be found that engenders trust, bu...

20 November 2013 /regulation /wholesale

Dan Barnes Writer at Information Corporation

Party like it's 1929

Several US senators have introduced a bill bringing back elements of the Glass-Steagall Act “to reduce risks to the financial system by limiting banks’ ability to engage in certain risky activities and limiting conflicts of interest.” With some banks still struggling to swallow the Dodd-Frank Act, will the ‘21st Century Glass-Steagall Act’ serve t...

20 November 2013 /regulation /wholesale

Dan Barnes Writer at Information Corporation

Criminals get physical

Financial Fraud Action (FFA) UK, the finance industry’s national anti-fraud group has observed an increase in successful criminal activity in the first half of 2013, with physical theft of cards using increasingly complex techniques on the rise. I thought Chip and PIN was going to stop fraud? Fraud is like an air bubble under a plastic sheet; if yo...

20 November 2013 /security /wholesale

Dan Barnes Writer at Information Corporation

Boom or Bust?

When regulators define mathematics, the apparent certainty that the science brings is thrown to the wind. Big banks are currently selling off cash reserves, issuing stock and swapping the labels over on balance sheet items, apparently to please the regulators. Are we any safer? Why do some banks have to raise more money? In June 2011, the Basel Co...

20 November 2013 /regulation /wholesale

Dan Barnes Writer at Information Corporation

Back where we started

It’s Sept 2013, and we’re upon the anniversary of Lehman Brothers. Much editorial this week has been devoted to the perceived risk that still exists in the banking system. Haven’t regulators reformed the markets? Regulators have imposed a lot of changes to the way that banks do business and have even more changes still to happen. These changes are ...

20 November 2013 /regulation /wholesale

Dan Barnes Writer at Information Corporation

AQR - You can't handle the truth

We can soon expect the European Central Bank (ECB) to outline the details of the Asset Quality Review (AQR), an examination of some 130 European banks’ assets, to be conducted in 2014. The AQR may well lead to a polarisation of banks, cutting to the quick on their viability or otherwise. As such it may precede something of a cull… Banks get tested...

20 November 2013 /regulation /wholesale