Join the Community

22,670
Expert opinions
43,867
Total members
385
New members (last 30 days)
182
New opinions (last 30 days)
28,908
Total comments

Trends in Financial Services

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

Ainsley Ward

Ainsley Ward Vice President, Payments Solutions at CGI

Strange things afoot in the POS world...

When I worked for a terminal vendor a few years ago, I made a prediction that the market would quickly consolidate down to a few (probably 3) big players - and that they'd most likely be VeriFone, Hypercom & Ingenico - but what I didn't see coming was that the market would get as cutthroat as this. What's unfolding in the Hypercom/Ingenico/Th...

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Back to basics for CIOs?

As Gartner predicts, apparently against the run of events, healthy growth rates in global outsourcing this year (8.1 percent IT & BPO), I wonder if financial sector CIOs aren’t actually considering the year with a wry smile? Despite contemplating a budget squeeze and the need to fully comply with regulatory issues such as MiFID and SEPA, they ...

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Small Is Increasingly Beautiful

There is a trend underpinning Web 2.0. It is a turn to the small - the micro, the nano - whether in payments, transactions, communications, niche, enterprise or economy. It may be too early to label this as a paradigm shift, but the expansion of the microsphere is clearly underway. While the "micro" prefix may be largely associated with ...

Retired Member

Retired Member 

What's keeping you awake at night?

Having been on the road and transitioned through 4 continents since early January, I have spent many a recent hour in an airport lounge counting airplanes and people watching. With my wife and children left behind in good old "blighty" I've had plenty of time to ponder the current turmoil in the financial services industry. As I laid a...

/regulation

Alan Goodrich

Alan Goodrich Regional Sales Manager at ERI

SCARY MOVIE... prepare to SCREAM!

Seriously, those of faint disposition should have a cushion handy to hide behind! How often do we read about and debate the moral dilemma of mere mortals "playing God" in areas such as medicine, e.g. stem cell research, and physics, e.g. creating anti-matter – but do we ever have that debate in financial services? On the publicly availabl...

/regulation

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Cloud computing - only cloudy or with silver lining too?!

With the amazing speed & success of Google, cloud computing has emerged as the leading edge paradigm of computing architectures. The "newness" (or "fogginess", as the cynical banker is apt to think!) of this concept can be gauged from the fact that a Google search "define: cloud computing" results in zero results...

Alan Goodrich

Alan Goodrich Regional Sales Manager at ERI

Anyone got 1 Euro to spare..?

On 5th March 1995 Dutch banking and insurance group ING bought Barings for £1 and assumed liabilities of over $600m. According to some McKinsey research presented by Mark Lawrence at a PRMIA event I attended in London on 18th December 2006, based on a sample of more than 350 operational loss events, normalized for industry performance, the decline ...

/regulation

Alan Goodrich

Alan Goodrich Regional Sales Manager at ERI

The Retail Branch debate won't die...

Just when you thought the subject had safely swam off quietly into deeper waters, frightened off by crazed French bankers; the debate resurfaces thanks to those nice analysts at Celent.

/retail

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Rogue Implications

Once again the vulnerability of global financial institutions is illuminated by the operations of a single individual. Today's announcement of EUR5 billion in losses at SocGen adds to an ever-expanding list of Nick-Leeson style trading debacles - Chinese metals trader Liu Qibing's copper loss of $100 million, a Mizuho broker's sale of 610,000 sh...

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Financial Power 2.0

It would seem that we have entered a period of bipolarity in global financial affairs. On the one side we have (Eastern) sovereign wealth funds charged with investing vast sums amassed through explosive economic growth (China, Singapore) or the skyrocketing price of oil (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Russia) and on the other, (primarily Western) private se...

Now Hiring