Trends in Financial Services

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

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

Retired Member 

I prefer the casino

" Surely the stockmarket can't go any lower" Alot of people have been asking this question recently and wondering if its time to step in to the markets! After five days or so of heavy losses in the global stockmarkets finally we had a big bounce. But is this any different to red coming five times in a row on the roulette table and bettin...

15 October 2008 /retail

Jonathan Rosenne Chairman at QSM Programming Ltd.

Is the use of PIN for every purchase justified?

Every use of the PIN exposes it, and the exposure has a cost attached. For small value transactions, say less than 50 Pounds, it is probably not economically justified. Moreover, establishements where most of the transactions are low value could probably use much cheaper terminals, that do not have PIN pads at all. No PIN used, no PIN stolen.

13 October 2008 /retail

Retired Member 

This sucker could go down

It seems that George Bush has more insight than I thought after making this comment last week. Alan Greenspan wrote a now famous research article on how the monetary system risked collapse if it wasn't fully backed by Gold. This was in the 70's shortly after the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement, and it seems that the old adage applies - that...

10 October 2008 /wholesale