Latest opinions that Alex Noble has shared on Finextra

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Alex Noble

Account Director

McAfee

Member since

10 Jan 2008

Location

London

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Alex's opinions

Bank Branches, do we bet on Botin or BBVA or the stats from the FDIC?

It’s been a fascinating contrast between the statements of Ana Botin and Francisco Gonzalez. In her first interview, Ana Botin (the new Global Chairwoman of Santander, formerly CEO of Santander UK) told the Financial Times that, “Bank branches will save banks from digital challengers”. Meanwhile, with uncanny timing, it was reported that Francis...

24 February 2015 /retail Innovation in Financial Services

Are we getting Big Data fatigue?

There seems to be some shock that bank execs might be dissatisfied with Big Data. Big Data (the ability to analyse and understand massive data sets) has been heralded as revolutionary for financial services and is seen as a major IT trend. The promise is huge. The compute power and analytic software now exist to interrogate unimaginably huge amo...

14 January 2015 /regulation Innovation in Financial Services

First Direct - Lessons from Banks vs Supermarkets

I’ve long been an admirer of First Direct. Recently I’ve begun to think that First Direct might be the model for how banks defend themselves from the rise of supermarket banking. First Direct is already as a model of how a niche subsidiary should be managed a bigger bank but it might also be a model for how banks develop offerings that can counter...

06 October 2014 /retail Innovation in Financial Services

The Growth in Voice Biometrics for Banking

It’s been an interesting week for those interested in Financial Services and how biometrics could be used in the industry. It was the subject of my last post on Finextra (“Voiceprints can counter ID theft, but other threats remain”), looking at Barclays’s use of Nuance and Cisco Voice Portal and last week on Finextra brought out some of the indust...

19 February 2014 /retail Innovation in Financial Services

Multi-channel or good channels?

I’m very struck by one quote from the Tower Group report on multi-channel, "CEOs are realising that channel investments should be tied to specific experience goals and customers should be guided to the channel that best suits their needs". I don’t want to be too harsh, but surely that was always the point of multi-channel? As someone who...

25 September 2013 /retail Innovation in Financial Services

Just where are you advertising? Brands, Social Media and CRM

Nationwide Building Society did well to respond so quickly to last week’s social media campaign. The story and the whole news cycle highlights a new set of risks & challenges for CRM. What makes it especially challenging is that there were no objections to the content of the adverts or Nationwide itself. The problem was the context in which the...

07 June 2013 /retail Innovation in Financial Services

Voiceprints can counter ID theft, but other threats remain

I was surprised at the extensive coverage of the Barclays Wealth change in customer identification techniques. Barclays have introduced passive voice identification, so the system identifies callers as they speak to an agent in natural language. It is a challenging way of doing ID&V over a phone–line, but when it can be made to work it has hu...

22 May 2013 /retail Innovation in Financial Services

Just how much change is coming to UK branch banking?

Looking at the recent news stories or even just a quick glance at Finextra, a reader would have no doubt that change is coming to branch banking. What would be perhaps open to debate is the level of change. Plenty of recent stories have suggested that c conceptually branch banking will remain the same, just with more technology, nicer stores and s...

25 October 2012 /retail Innovation in Financial Services

The challenge for RBoS positioning the Direct Line IPO

On one level, selling Direct Line in an IPO looks straight forward. The business model is proven and is made up of strong, well established brands. It is the leading UK personal lines insurer with a 19% market share in motor and 18% in home, which equates to 4.2 million personal motor and 4.3 million home in-force policies. It would be a mistake, ...

20 September 2012 /retail Unified Communications in Financial Services

Why off shore service is returning to the UK

It’s very interesting to see that Santander is bringing back 500 contact centre agents from India to the UK. This is good news for the UK economy, and is also part of a much wider trend in customer service that Santander is following. I’ve blogged on this before and good examples of firms brining service back to the UK include HSBC (see “HSBC cre...

08 July 2011 /security /retail

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