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Retired Member

Retired Member 

Absolute power corrupts

I was reading Chris Skinner’s blog on “How the media changes reality”, and had to pick up on the topic of bullying. Having been a short, bespectacled kid with asthma (as opposed to now being a short, bespectacled adult without asthma), bullying is always something that gets to me – not because it happened to me, but when I watch people try to do ...

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Market transparency

The European Commission and market regulators have indicated that a review of the nature of market transparency in the bonds and derivatives sectors may kick off this autumn, shortly before MiFID is due to be implemented. Some firms are starting to see potential opportunities in the transparency space. Traditionally, the local stock exchange has ...

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Hope versus Experience

Over someone’s shoulder on the train this morning I noticed an article about remarriage being “the triumph of hope over experience”. It makes me think of one political party’s theme-song of “Things can only get better”, but also what got us out of living in caves in the first place. And I can just see one Eeyorish caveman saying to another, “Don...

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Death and geography

I once predicted the demise of the mainframe – for a few minutes. I’d been running a pan-European survey project for a major computer manufacturer into the market for all sizes of computers for the coming seven years. Extrapolating from history, mainframes would be dead within seven years. My truly-brilliant boss told me that “things don’t work...

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Customer inertia is not a retention strategy

The UK retail banking industry has always been a fraud when it comes to technology; it invests heavily to keep up with its savvier, more glamorous counterparts like retail and entertainment. But while it's busy playing buzzword bingo (website, tick. CRM database, tick. BI system, tick.) its customers are still not getting what they need: a simple ...

/retail

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Pilgrim's Process

I’m buying and selling houses this year. Sounds very grand, but I assure you that there is minimal wealth involved here. Facts are that the last two junior family members are off to university in central London this September, so Plan 1 - Senior Management and I decided to sell the family pile quick, and move somewhere distant and smaller so that ...

/payments

Retired Member

Retired Member 

FIX can fix IT

What’s the difference between an application standard and a standard application? (I’ll let you ponder on that one for a moment). All standards are developed by volunteers – practitioners who, as part of their day jobs, have to deal with the problems that the lack of appropriate standards has created for the financial services industry. The volunt...

Retired Member

Retired Member 

The resilience of modern infrastructure

I've made a mental note in future to check the weather forecast before taking a day off although today's deluge does bring back nostalgic memories of windswept childhood holidays, somewhere in Wales with it raining sideways. Interestingly the BBC weather site and Metcheck are both down at the time of writing - both displaying errors along the line...

Whatever...

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Latency, card payments and economies of scale

“Latency” is an issue that we hear a lot about over in the Capital Markets and Financial Technology spaces. It looks like it may well have an impact in the payments space too. A lot of talk about Payments and SEPA is about the bank-to-bank part, involving a relatively-small volume of messages about high-value transactions. This is looking at the ...

Retired Member

Retired Member 

Why are ATMs so rubbish?

You queue and queue. You enter your PIN. You have an overwhelming urge to wash your hands in bleach - the thing's filthy. You choose the cash option (no receipt since you're eco-friendly). You choose an amount from the menu and wait. At this point it says "You can't have that amount - only 20 pound notes available". Would it have been SO ...

/retail

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