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Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

The carbon currency card

"Imagine a country where carbon becomes a new currency. We carry bank cards that store both pounds and carbon points. When we buy electricity, gas and fuel, we use our carbon points, as well as pounds. To help reduce carbon emissions, the Government would set limits on the amount of carbon that could be used." The words of UK Environment...

/payments /retail Futuristic Banking

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Blink, and you've missed it

Mind-boggling stat of the day. 10 Milliseconds: trade execution times on the London Stock Exchange's new TradElect platform. 100-150 milliseconds: the amount of time taken to blink the human eye.

Whatever...

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

HSBC values customer feedback

Are people more likely to switch banks to get a better deal, or because of poor customer service? That was the question asked by a YouGov survey for moneysupermarket.com back in October last year. Over a quarter (29%) of people switched as a result of poor service or a bad experience, compared with a lowly 13% who deserted for a better rate on the...

/retail Trends in Financial Services

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

There's no such thing as a free insurance quote

Direct Line, the insurance subsidiary of Royal Bank of Scotland, has launched a biting attack on the independence and accuracy of online price comparison services. In a new TV advertising campaign it warns consumers to be wary of these sites when searching for cheaper car or home insurance. Direct Line’s assault on the price comparison business ha...

/retail

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Chip Mahan's new pet project

Chip Mahan, who stepped down from the post of CEO and chairman of Internet banking vendor S1 in October last year, is setting up a new specialist lending business in Wilmington, North Carolina. Live Oak Banking is on track to receive its charter in July and could open its doors for business within six months. The niche bank will focus on business ...

/retail Where are they now?

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

When in Rome...

On a mission to get the non-bank perspective on Europe’s progress towards a Single Euro Payments Area I sat in on a couple of fringe conferences sessions at the EBAday show in Rome. Technology vendors I’d spoken to ahead of the show had promised to stir things up a little, and this they duly did, giving their banking paymasters a good kicking in t...

/retail EBAday

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum

Blogging from Rome at the annual EBAday conference, a European payments forum organised by Finextra and the Euro Banking Association. Delegates attending the show are looking for guidance and insight as the deadlines loom for the creation of a Single Euro Payments Area (Sepa). Sepa was the big draw at last year's inaugural show in Frankfurt and th...

/payments /retail EBAday

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Pimp my plantpot

How to make friends and influence people: The UK’s Co-operative Bank is promising to donate 20 pence to a children’s charity in return for people who join the bank’s list of friends at its new MySpace page. Now, we all know that buying friends on MySpace is not cool. But the Co-op has cleverly included the pay-per-friend scheme as a natural extensi...

/retail Trends in Financial Services

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Wells' Web makeover woos punters and analysts

A recent redesign of the Wells Fargo homepage led to a 50% uplift in online applications, more use of key functions such as the account log-in and branch and ATM location tools, and a significant fall-off in search enquiries. The bank’s Internet Services Group used site stats, survey data and internal search information to pick up on customer re...

/retail

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Who launched the UK's first Internet bank?

Some confusion in the Finextra editorial office this past few days after we received conflicting press releases from Nationwide and the Royal Bank of Scotland both claiming to have launched the UK's first Internet bank ten years ago. So it was gratifying to get an unsolicited update on the issue from the Nationwide press office this afternoon, poi...

/retail

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