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Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Customers force-fed card security standards

Two of the UK’s biggest banks, Barclays and NatWest, have moved to make subscription to MasterCard SecureCode and Verified by Visa mandatory for debit card payments made online to approved merchants. I know this because I recently tried to pay off my credit card bill and was forced to sign up for the card scheme security standards. This entailed a...

/security Trends in Financial Services

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Money makes the world go around

How do you get senior management buy-in for a commitment to environmental sustainability and carbon neutrality? By hitting executives where it hurts – in the back pocket. That’s the approach that’s been taken by HSBC, where environmental sustainability objectives have been linked to bonus payments in the board room. The global banking giant has co...

/retail /wholesale Going green

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Green is good

Organisations that are tempted to cut back on green PC initiatives as part of wider IT cost-cutting efforts may find themselves out of pocket in the near- to mid-term, according to Gartner. For most companies, being green actually saves money and alleviates some of the pressure on IT budgets, says the analyst house. Here at Finextra, we'll be exp...

/retail /wholesale Going green

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

A letter to the editor

Who would want to be a bank boss? Andrew Clare from the Cass Business School, clearly thinks it worth a punt. From the letters page of the FT: Sir I know that this is not normally the forum to advertise one's qualifications in the hope of finding a new career, but hopefully you will excuse the liberty. I have no experience whatsoever in running a b...

/regulation /wholesale Whatever...

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

HSBC loses credibility as well as data

Given the regulatory and reputational risk associated with the loss of personal customer data it beggars belief that a top tier bank can still think it's OK to despatch an unecrypted computer disc containing sensitive information on 370,000 of its customers by courier. HSBC's defence - that the disc was password protected and contained no bank acc...

/security /retail

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Bank execs pay ultimate price for wrong bet

Two bank workers who stole 45 million yuan (HK$49.93 million) to buy lottery tickets have been executed in Hebei province, according to an AFP report quoting the Xinhau News Agency. The two vault managers started taking money from the safe to play the state lottery, hoping they would eventually win back enough to replace the missing funds. Makes y...

/regulation /wholesale Whatever...

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Credit risk transfer: Where did it all go so wrong?

"A few fundamental tenets of sound financial judgment appear to have been violated." That's the typically understated view of the Bank for International Settlements, in its first official review of the havoc wreaked on the financial markets by wanton abuse of credit risk transfer instruments. The central bankers bank first reviewed the CR...

/regulation /wholesale Finexpo

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Top 100 April Fool's day hoaxes

Dog racing on ice? (The Daily Mirror). Nicolas Sarkozy to be stretched? (the Sun - natch). UBS share price soars on news of massive write-downs? (All financial press - the madness of markets). On April Fool’s day it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. Nor can you trust newspaper advertising - witness BMW's campaign today pr...

/retail /wholesale Whatever...

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Price war looms for European exchanges

European exchanges had best get ready for another round of fierce price cutting following the announcement by the US-based Bats ECN that it is to set up an operation in London. The Bats ECN launched in the US two years ago and now claims an 8-10% market share in US equities. Much of its success stemmed from an agressive pricing plan introduced in ...

/wholesale Finextra50 fintech index

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

PCI compliance fails to prevent Hannaford hacking

The Hannaford card security breach is a worrying development for the payment card industry. The exploit - which would appear to be an inside job - exposes weaknesses in the PCI compliance standards explicitly and expensively promoted by the card companies as a solution to restoring consumer confidence in payment card security. Unlike TJX, Hannafor...

/security /payments Trends in Financial Services

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