Late last year, the American Banker of the Year awards were held, and the winner was Ken Lewis .  Fast forward and his decisions on Merrill Lynch, China Construction Bank and  Countrywide are being put together a call for his resignation.  In particular the article notes somewhat to my surprise that BofA were not pressed into taking over Merrill – this was done voluntarily. In any event the armchair quarterbacks are out in force.  The strategic opportunities of China, Mortgages, and brokerages were 100% accepted as valid at the time by commentators, newspapers, government and industry.  The problems that arose … Continue reading Ken Lewis judgement wrongly being called into question

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