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Ketharaman Swaminathan

Founder and CEO
GTM360 Marketing Solutions
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17 Apr 2009
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Followed by John Sims, Martha Boyle and 5 others you follow
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Ketharaman's comments

clear
You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, so goes the saying

In my post Banks Will Know Chipotle Is Going Bankrupt Before Chipotle, I’ve quoted several examples of banks making excellent use of data gathered not only from the earth but also from the sky to make a quick buck. That said, banks may need to be more cautious than other industries in how far they go with data (probably because they handle money, which is different from goods and services). Like in the example quoted in my post, while customers say they want personalized offers and do like the ones they get from Uber et al, they tend to find the ones they get from banks quite creepy.

09 Oct 2017 15:32 Read comment

Faster Payments invites bids for infrastructure overhaul

@AndrewStrong: I'm not debating the process. I'm only wondering why it can't be expedited. After it's not called Slower Payments:) And, if memory serves, vendor selection took about a year the first time around 10-12 years ago, shouldn't it happen lot faster than that, considering that "agile" has gone mainstream in SDLC now?:)

@JohnQuamina: Please correct me if I'm wrong but functional and technical requirements are written after the vendor is selected. Ergo, their completion shouldn't be a prerequisite for selecting the vendor.

@AnonFinextraMember: I vaguely remember a similar question coming up in the context of MasterCard's acquisiton of VocaLink. Extrapolating from my fading and limited understanding of the answer provided by someone at the time, NPSO is probably not the owner of FPS and will operate whatever FPS infrastructure is given to it by whoever the owner of FPS is.

09 Oct 2017 12:17 Read comment

Faster Payments invites bids for infrastructure overhaul

One year to select a supplier?

Faster Payments happened in 2008 but Faster Supplier selection hasn't yet started:)

06 Oct 2017 19:27 Read comment

Canadian lenders issue open banking warning

Oh c'mon @BrianCostello, you want banks to add more friction to Internet Banking just so that fintechs can get read-only access? This "open banking" thing is sounding even more delusional than I thought.

I also love the way the number of customers who have benefited from PFM / MoMMA has suddenly jumped from "thousands" to "millions". But let me play along for the moment: In the IT industry, of which fintech is a part, it's a standard practice to provide testimonials from customers. Where are these testimonials in the case of PFM/ MoMMA? I had a quick glance at the CFDRG and DNATA websites you linked to and couldn't find any testimonial. They say they want to help customers but don't provide any evidence of already having done so.

06 Oct 2017 17:27 Read comment

Ten Years of iPhone Success: What Could Banks Learn From Nokia’s Fall?

To answer the question that forms the title of your post: Nothing. For more than one reason:

  1. Banking is an industry. Nokia is one single company.
  2. Apple does not run on Nokia's rails. Almost all of fintech runs on banking rails. 
  3. Nokia was disrupted by Apple, which is another company in the same industry. 
  4. There's no equivalent of Apple in the banking industry. Even if one were to emerge from some other industry, such a company can offer a full suite of banking products to compete with banks only by getting a banking license - i.e. by becoming another bank. If and when that happens, one company in the banking industry would have killed all other companies in the same industry. That's good old competition at play and has been happening since the dawn of business.
  5. For all the threats to the banking industry from fintechs for the last 5-7 years, finserv continues to be the most profitable sector in the world. 

I'm surprised to be reading a time-warped post like this, a year or two after many fintechs themselves called off their former disruption mantra and publicly accepted that their survival depends on working with banks. 

06 Oct 2017 16:48 Read comment

Bloomberg unbundles chat to take on Symphony

LOL the mother of all fintechs is feeling threatened by banks now!

06 Oct 2017 16:16 Read comment

PSD2: Brits don't trust retailers and social media platforms with bank details

"Customers want to leave their wallet at home".

"Customers need help with their finances".

"Customers must be permitted to switch banks".

Given the tepid response to mobile wallet, PFM / MoMMA and Account Switching technologies, these assumptions are more imagination.

Hope the assumption that customers want to cross the digital road and need help doing so is grounded on reality.

Suppliers are the ones who will benefit from adoption of their products / services. So why should public money be used for this program? Especially when vendor consortia like CFDRG and FDATA already seem to be doing some work in this space (Source). 

06 Oct 2017 15:55 Read comment

Canadian lenders issue open banking warning

Let's examine this statement carefully: "financial wellness for thousands of consumers have been improved by consumer-permissioned data driven solutions."

Given that MINT et al boast of millions, if not tens of millions, of users, "thousands of consumers" is 0.1% of the user base. IMO, any technology that delivers its promised benefits to only 0.1% of its user base is closer to snake-oil than innovation. Taking financial decisions by using the toss of a coin would've benefited a far higher percentage of the user base.

It's simply not worth handing over the keys to the kingdom - aka Online Banking  credentials - to something that delivers benefits to such a tiny fraction of its user base.

06 Oct 2017 10:09 Read comment

Canadian lenders issue open banking warning

During the last 10 years or so, a few million people have handed over their Internet Banking credentials to MINT et al. So, even without the official approval of PSD2 / Open Banking, PFMs and MoMMAs have had full scraping access to customers' bank accounts for a long time. What have they done with it so far? Have they radically changed the financial health of these people? or helped them fund their retirement? or helped them optimize their fixed income? If they can demonstrate that they have, tens of millions of customers will queue up to hand over their banking creds to them - even without PSD2 / Open Banking regs.

04 Oct 2017 15:46 Read comment

Canadian lenders issue open banking warning

LOL. Fintechs say technology evolves too fast for banks to keep pace. Now banks say banking evolves too fast for regulators to keep pace. I'm waiting for the regulator to close the loop by saying regulation evolves too fast for fintechs to keep pace! But it's all a moot point. Innovative Fintechs Don’t Need No PSD2 Regulation

03 Oct 2017 14:41 Read comment

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