This from the “Fool” requires no further explanation.  The opportunities for Banks to differentiate, and become customer centric are exponential!  This is not restricted to UK Banks. Banking is bad for businesses Although the Competition Commission ruled in 2002 that banks were massively overcharging small businesses for everyday banking … 2. Blinding us with brands As I explained in Do You Know Who You’re Dealing With?,.. For example, credit cards from Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Virgin Money are all, in fact, issued by giant US bank MBNA… Delayed cheques and slow payments Other countries have same-day cheque clearing, so why … Continue reading Banks Behaving Badly! – The Motley Fool UK

As Gulf Banks gear up for Gitex 2006 Emirates Bank is signalling it will highlight leading functionality. The banking group has built a reputation of excellence as regards its wide range of online services for its customers, from consumer banking all the way to large corporate customers. Its solutions are not limited to the internet, but allow customers to receive SMS text alerts of major transactions – all offered through Emirates Bank’s advanced online infrastructure systems. Source: ITP.net {News: Emirates Bank readies latest e-banking solutions}   Technorati tags: gitex+2006, emirates+bank, online+banking, account+alerts Continue reading ITP.net {News: Emirates Bank readies latest e-banking solutions}

 Still a dearth of blogging from ANA.  This quote suggests the marketers at BMW Mini have the right idea. Jim McDowell on how Mini creates community among their owners: “We fuel it by not controlling it. Source: Cymfony’s Influence 2.0: ANA Masters of Marketing — Quotable Quotes, Part 2 But the most telling piece is here at AttentionMax where the P&G CMO no less speaks of “Let’s stop thinking about consumers and start thinking about people“.  As Max suggests it sounded like Stengel read Cluetrain the night before. Stengel should’ve concluded with a tactical, achievable mandate to the thousand or … Continue reading Cymfony’s Influence 2.0: ANA Masters of Marketing — The community of the Mini

 What caught my attention here is that a few hundred machines were still down at this Bank following correction of the problem. CIBC officials say that most of the 1,200 cash machines knocked offline yesterday are working again. But a few hundred machines, mostly in eastern Ontario and located in convenience stores are still out of order. The outage occurred during a routine upgrade of a software program, bank spokesperson Rob McLeod said. Source: TheStar.com – CIBC ATM’s back online I understand from sources, that the few hundred still down have to be individually visited to have a software change made … Continue reading TheStar.com – CIBC ATM’s back online, but lack central software management

This story is significant in that no-one/ industry is exempt from dramatic shifts in the Internet space.  A 31% shift is not a result of adoption increases. Newspaper websites averaged more than 55.5 million visitors a month in the first half of 2006, a 31 percent increase over the 42.4 million visitors over the same period a year ago, according to the Newspaper Association of America Source: More Internet users visiting US newspaper websites: survey – Yahoo! News I remain convinced that we will see a similar hockey stick effect in online banking one of these days.  In the case of … Continue reading More Internet users visiting US newspaper websites: good news for online banking

In a reversal of recent trends, building branches is becoming popular, in order to attract market share and deposits.  Royal Bank, the country’s largest bank by assets, may build as many as 112 branches in the next four years, Chief Operating Officer Barbara Stymiest said today at a CIBC World Markets investor conference in Montreal. Scotiabank, the third-biggest bank, plans to open 30 branches next year, Chief Executive Officer Richard Waugh said at the same conference. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the fifth-largest bank, said last month that it plans to open or expand 70 branches in the next five … Continue reading Canadian Banks & Insurance | RBC, Scotiabank to Add Branches

 I’d say its pretty darned exciting for a country to be entering the world of online banking from scratch, as in this example in Uganda.  I think too there will be lessons we can learn, from watching such implementations because they will likely avoid the mistakes we al made when we started this gig 10 years ago.  Key lesson for me, is walk, don’t run.  Pace yourself, and do it right remembering the customers who use the online banking service. Total online banking solutions will be provided in the country. This follows a partnership between Solutions for Business, a local company, … Continue reading New Vision Online : Firms to provide total e-banking services

There is a real thread developing amongst banks and their strategies, as they realise their marketing to home nationals misses immigrants.  And immigrants form a large part of every country’s make up now.  Here is a further update on the Canadian Banks efforts to develop market share amongst “new Canadians”. In order to reach them, RBC too has set up a multilingual website and can facilitate non-resident account openings online. The site averages about 5,000 hits a month. “The Chinese version is already about 35 per cent of the traffic,” Whitmell said. “We’ve launched that so that anybody, anywhere around … Continue reading Big banks compete to court immigrant clientele; market, in Canada alone, worth about $3B a year

High street retailers are losing ground to online sales, and this is clear now.  It doesn’t matter whether you are looking at clothes or entertainment (movies and music), the picture is the same. But the key question is whether these initiatives will be enough to stem the decline in their traditional businesses. It will clearly be a struggle. Last week’s trading statement from HMV, which also owns Waterstone’s, showed that sales were down 3.7 per cent over the last 12 months. Others are suffering too: while Next could boast a 15.3 per cent rise in sales of its Directory mail … Continue reading The Observer | Internet’s new wave threatens to wash the high street away