Trends in Financial Services

A community to discuss the future of financial services and any other interesting trends, strategies, ideas, views.

Retired Member 

Industry pressure drives required changes in OTC processing

In an FT article a few days back, Jay Hooley of State Street raised some concerns around the impact of OTC volumes on legacy systems. In my experience many firms today have developed limited capabilities for automating the OTC volume within their business. Where it does exist it is often in silos, and does not cover the full life-cycle of the c...

04 March 2009 /sibos

Retired Member 

The Convenience of Cheques: Long May They Live

I wrote a cheque the other day. Only a small one; it was a present to a relative. A not very imaginative present, yes, but there you go. It got me thinking, though. If cheques disappeared, how would I send this present? Some people have said that this is where prepaid cards come in (indeed, in a past life, the use of prepaid cards as presents w...

04 March 2009 /retail

Retired Member 

Snouts in the trough

We’ve heard much about how bankers have been rewarded too much for doing too little. And we’ve mainly heard it from politicians. So, now I’m going to give the bankers a break. As long as I can remember in politics (and that’s a long time), there have been allegations levelled – and fairly regularly proven - against politicians abusing their status....

04 March 2009 /regulation /wholesale

Retired Member 

When Banks got too Big

When did Banks get too Big? Banks used to be small. Then that all changed. Banks bought each other. Banks got bigger and fewer. The only real kind of bank was one that was global, and carried out every kind of financial transaction you could imagine. The model where a plethora of smaller banks that specialised on core competences was swept away in ...

03 March 2009 /regulation

Retired Member 

History Rewrite at Northern Rock.

Interesting comment reported on the BBC website this morning. Gary Hoffman is quoted as saying (about the resumption of lending): "We can now return to what we do well - mortgage lending." Correct me if I'm wrong, but it was their mortgage lending policies and practices that got them into the mess in the first instance. By what yardstic...

03 March 2009 /regulation /retail

Retired Member 

A new Glass-Steagall? No thanks.

The recent discussion about the virtues of a re-introduction of Glass-Steagall may have taken a wrong turn. Glass-Steagall was introduced to physically separate lending from securities underwriting and trading. The new debate is not about the same concept, but rather about the delineation of banking services to clients from proprietary trading act...

27 February 2009

Hans Hagen Founder at Alphastrike

Will WooGroup Succeed in Taking on Western Union?

A new challenger to Western Union recently emerged in the money transfer area. The WooGroup, based in Paris, was recently listed on the Paris stock exchange (Nyse Euronext, ticker MLWOO). After a somewhat chaotic start – the listing was postponed a week following liquidity problems by Europe Finance et Industry, tasked to manage the introduction – ...

26 February 2009 /payments

Retired Member 

Risk, Regulation and Resourcefulness?

“One third of CIOs reported no change in their budget from 2008, while 46 percent reported a slight increase, and 21 percent reported a cut in IT budgets” [1]. Most businesses are facing flat or only slight increases in budgets according to this recent Gartner report and yet this month the FSA announced its plan to change its rules governing liquid...

30 January 2009

Hans Hagen Founder at Alphastrike

What did I miss about PayPass cards at Carrefour in France?

To my great satisfaction I read recently that Carrefour will issue it's PASS card with contactless technology in collaboration with MasterCard. The new card will be on the cutting edge of current card technology, including multiple accounts on the same chip, giving consumers the choice to pay with their own money (debit) or funds made available...

29 January 2009 /payments

Retired Member 

Demand for knowledge transfer in outsourcing?

In an effort to find out what our clients and potential clients were thinking...we asked them. Although the tectonic plates in the outsourcing world seem to shift daily, changing the landscape dramatically, we discovered some interesting and relevant results: 1. A rising demand for knowledge transfer 2. An expected increase in the need for outsourc...

17 October 2008