278 Results from 2008, /retail
Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra
HSBC recently wrote to inform me of important changes to my bank account. Apparently, customers had expressed dissatisfaction with the paltry 0.1% AER rate of credit interest offered on HSBC's curent account. HSBC's solution? To stop paying any interest on its new range of current accounts. "After all," says the bank. "You could get ...
21 October 2008 /retail
Retired Member
Floating in space in their spaceship, out beyond the Kuiper Belt, Zig and Zag have been monitoring Earth’s newswires. They receive a message from Zug at High Command. ZUG: Report. Should we establish first contact with these aliens? ZIG: On the face of it, it looks good. They’ve got satellites, probes visiting other planets, telescopes out i...
Nick Clegg, leader of the UK Liberal Democrat Party, and David Howarth, MP for Cambridgeshire announced their new party policy on protections against identity fraud during a recent visit to Cambridge Labs to watch a CHIP and PIN attack demonstrated. Credit rating companies are exempt from aspects of the Data Protection Act and can forward personal...
21 October 2008 /retail Whatever...
Gary Wright Analyst at BISS Research
Now lets be totally candid about this and all admit what millions of people already know Offshore Call Centres in financial services are not working. They may be cost effective to the firms off shoring for the moment but in the medium to long term will prove disastrous. Financial services is a relationship business and as soon as the connection is...
20 October 2008 /retail EBAday
A bit tongue in cheek, this, okay? The overarching problem we face is the high level of indebtedness. People have borrowed too much, the banks have lent too much, it's becoming impossible to service the debts - on both sides. Basically, we have sprayed around money we didn't have, and we now need to repay it. Alternatively, we need to make it l...
20 October 2008 /retail
As news from the markets veer from bad to worse and each day brings more doom and gloom its worth noting one of the big success story's of the last few years. EMXCo were set up in the 20th century to bring some efficiency into investment funds and other collective products that were still operating like it was the 19th century. The basic original ...
17 October 2008 /retail SEPA and European Payments
I have a few issues with CHIP and PIN or No PIN. 1. It is a security failure of the system which renders the PIN unusable, and turns it into a weakness rather than a strength. 2. The system now relies on the NFC CHIP, which communicates by radio frequency and can be cloned, not necessarily as a card, but as a radio frequency signal transmitter/rece...
17 October 2008 /retail Whatever...
It is interesting to see the commentary in the press about the 'part-nationalisations' of the three banks. It was also illuminating to see the Chancellor on Newsnight last night, being very shifty about the dividend issue. I don't understand why he was doing that, since before the deals can be completed the terms will have to be set out very clear...
16 October 2008 /retail
Just a thought, but the shareholders of Lloyds, HBOS and RBS presumably will have to pass board resolutions allowing the boards to a) issue the preference shares and b) issue sufficient new ordinary shares to allow the rights issue to happen - they can't possibly have that headroom under their current permissions. I wonder what would happen if the...
15 October 2008 /retail
" 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 Trends in Financial Services
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