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Dan Barnes

Dan Barnes Writer at Information Corporation

European Banking Onion unpeeled

News that the European Parliament finally agreed the terms for ‘banking union’ on 20 March 2014 raised lacklustre cheers from the world of finance. The ‘union’ here is regulatory, taking the management of troubled big banks out of the hands of the many national authorities and putting it into the hands of the few European authorities. That is a bi...

/regulation Future Finance News Analysis

Dan Barnes

Dan Barnes Writer at Information Corporation

ATMs: No change there then

Regulators from the US to the Philippines have issued warnings to ATM firms that they should be cognisant of upgrading their operating systems by 8 April 2014, the date by which support for Windows XP will expire. Since Sam Woods, director of UK regulator the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) condemned technology at UK banks as “antiquated” in ...

/security /regulation Future Finance News Analysis

Dan Barnes

Dan Barnes Writer at Information Corporation

New Bitcoin ATMs trouble regulators

Regulators in Boston, USA, have issued warnings about the risks involved in Bitcoin purchase, after a second ATM device was set up in the state on 17 March 2014, offering Bitcoins for sale in exchange for US dollars. The ATMs or kiosks are produced by Liberty Teller, a small, Boston-based firm. They issue paper ‘wallets’, that look a little like a ...

/payments /regulation Future Finance

Dan Barnes

Dan Barnes Writer at Information Corporation

FX - The next big crash?

The news around foreign exchange suggests a storm is brewing, as speculation and light-touch regulation converge. Spot foreign exchange trading will reportedly become more automated where, until recently, it has been very opaque, with voice traders able to obfuscate their margins and - it has been alleged – to rig the market. This has annoyed thei...

/regulation Future Finance News Analysis

Dan Barnes

Dan Barnes Writer at Information Corporation

Switching sides on banking secrecy

I recall my parents explaining the secret model of Swiss bank accounts when I was a child in the mid-1980s. The purpose of the accounts, I was informed, was so that people who had stolen money could hide it. It seemed reasonable, to a young boy, that there would be a service to cater for criminals. Pirates had islands, highwaymen had crossroads, t...

/security /regulation Future Finance

Dan Barnes

Dan Barnes Writer at Information Corporation

Rebuilding the Chartered Institute of Bankers?

In an excellent article in the Financial Times, John Gapper notes that “Banks banged together in a 20-year spree of mergers and leveraged risk-taking, while old skills were replaced by computers, have little culture left from which to rebuild.” One cultural centre would have been the Chartered Institute of Bankers (CIB), an erstwhile employer of m...

/regulation Future Finance

Dan Barnes

Dan Barnes Writer at Information Corporation

The data crater

Enormous amounts of customer data have been lost in thefts affecting both retailers and banks. A recent case of data loss at Barclays allegedly included psychological profiling of customers, adding a new dimension to the problem of identity theft. Did the bank accidentally ‘add value’ to the pirated information? Authorities are responding, but the...

/security /regulation Future Finance News Analysis

Dan Barnes

Dan Barnes Writer at Information Corporation

Funny money

Turning down money from a potential customer who fails a test, is expensive. Building profiles of all of your customers is costly in both cash and resources. In fact, until HSBC and Standard Chartered cumulatively paid US$2.2 billion to US authorities in 2012 it seemed that failing to adhere to the anti-money laundering / know your customer (AML/...

/payments /regulation Future Finance News Analysis

Dan Barnes

Dan Barnes Writer at Information Corporation

Shovelling is overtaking counting

Regulators say that banks have not done enough to work out who owes what to whom. A report by the senior supervisors group of the Financial Stability Board has said: “Five years after the financial crisis, firms’ progress toward consistent, timely, and accurate reporting of top counterparty exposures fails to meet both supervisory expectations and...

/regulation Future Finance

Dan Barnes

Dan Barnes Writer at Information Corporation

Regulators strike at the core of banking and Who hit RBS?

Speaking to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee on 8 January 2014, Sam Woods, director of UK regulator the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) condemned technology at UK banks as “antiquated”. He reported that the regulatory body had “discovered a number of deficiencies” at the firms and that as a consequence there was a “programme of remediat...

/regulation /retail Future Finance

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