I attended enough marketing conferences and events this year to realise this headline is no surprise.  Classic response which I can hear now – “we are in a new paradigm, with new challenges that no-one has seen before – time to get back to basics, and forget all this talk about social this/ that”. Top Marketing Trends for 2009: Execs ‘Sick’ of Web 2 | MC Marketing Charts #4. Marketers “Sick” of Web 2.0: Twice as many marketers are “sick” of hearing about Web 2.0 and related buzzwords such as “blogs” and “social networking” compared with last year’s survey. I … Continue reading “Back to Basics” because marketing gets “it”

While this feels a little bit like a solution chasing a problem, its nice to see some experimentation happening.  In particular the interaction between the customers phone and the employee desktop is interesting.  NCR taps Microsoft Surface technology for branch transactions | Finextra Mark Grossi, VP, advanced development, NCR, says: "NCR knows that our bank customers want faster and easier ways to conduct transactions. This prototype demonstrates how assisted service technology will continue to enhance interactions between banks and their customers." Technorati Tags: NCR,Microsoft,Microsoft Touch Continue reading NCR experiments with Microsoft Surface for branches | Finextra

The always insightful Paul Penrose picks up on a terrific theme here that should as they say have legs.  Out of crisis normally comes innovation usually driven by forced choice than desire.  Banks are being squeezed in many ways, and one major one is resorting to reliance on regular retail and commercial banking as their core business (imagine that!) The bank branch – weakest link or saving grace? | Finextra – Paul Penrose Sean Park’s Sixth Paradigm blog refers to a recent editorial piece in the FT bemoaning the poor standards of customer service in high street bank branches. Sean … Continue reading Branch redesign – saviour or anchor?

While it was wonderful for Ken Lewis to be noted the Banker of the year, the NY Times points out that this was not a good year for any bankers.  Note that even the providers of the award, American Banker have laid people off.  Bring on the new year! Saluting a banker in a banking year worth forgetting While Mr. Lewis is a respected executive, 2008 hardly seems like the year for any banker, given how unpopular the industry is these days. Technorati Tags: American Banker,SourceMedia Continue reading Bad time to be a banker – 2008

Finextra have lots of news today it seems.  This one caught my attention because its one of my own pet peeves going back 2 1/2 years when I referred to secure email as a fiction.  Barclays chooses Kana messaging technology | Finextra KANA Secure Messaging combines email management with secure Web portals and provides simple and effective secure customer communication through Web channels, delivering private communications without the need for encryption applications. The reason its a fiction is that the various solutions all take the customer into a web page, that must be logged into, or require some additional software.  … Continue reading Barclays fall into the trap of trying to position secure messaging as email

This is a significant move, when we can have a headline that points to a Bank entering start up territory.  Wells have always been impressive, and the proof will be in the implementation.  Wells Fargo moves into PFM start-up territory with new budgeting tool | Finextra Wells Fargo is to make a bid for online banking territory currently occupied by niche Web 2.0 start-ups such as Mint with the launch of a personal Web-based budgeting tool for consumers to monitor their spending habits. The new tool, dubbed My Spending Report with Budget Watch, gives customers a consolidated view of their … Continue reading Wells Fargo significantly advance their spending analysis tools online

Canada begins the official rollout of chip and pin following 3 years of implementation, and testing.  Good stuff.  However I remain befuddled by one thing, and no amount of discussion with “chip experts” removed this doubt from my mind.  The issue is the retention of the magstripe on the card. Canada begins Chip and PIN roll out Chip cards will continue to carry the magnetic stripe to allow cardholders to use their debit cards in other countries that do not use chip technology. By definition, that means the card can be cloned, and used in a magstripe country.  We just … Continue reading Chip and pin Canada | the basic flaw