I haven’t covered Wesabe for a while.  Tomorrow they release a new feature that allows new customers to add their Bank if its not already in Wesabe. Wheaties for Your Wallet » Blog Archive » New feature: Add your own bank to Wesabe We’ve launched another great new feature tonight: if your bank or credit card isn’t listed as supported in Wesabe, you can add it yourself in under a minute. Why wait months for someone else to decide if they want to help you with your money or not, when you can be up and running in minutes? They … Continue reading Wesabe introduces ‘add your bank’ feature

The good news is that Banks have an enormous opportunity. The bad news is that the first steps to grasp that opportunity have yet to be taken. One important reason for escalating costs is that many financial institutions have not taken advantage of the overlapping elements of the requirements they face, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel, and the USA PATRIOT Act. …… many financial institutions have replicated compliance practices in individual lines of business, which has resulted in similar processes, procedures, and requests for information being multiplied across the enterprise. This is an surprising report for me. I have witnessed what … Continue reading Compliance costs are growing significantly faster than net income | Deloitte

The good news is that Banks have an enormous opportunity. The bad news is that the first steps to grasp that opportunity have yet to be taken. One important reason for escalating costs is that many financial institutions have not taken advantage of the overlapping elements of the requirements they face, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel, and the USA PATRIOT Act. …… many financial institutions have replicated compliance practices in individual lines of business, which has resulted in similar processes, procedures, and requests for information being multiplied across the enterprise. This is an astonishing report for me. I have witnessed what … Continue reading Compliance costs are growing significantly faster than net income

Just a quick post to wish all readers a Happy New Year.  This was an eventful, but fun year, and I hope you are all looking forward to 2008, as much as I am! Colin Continue reading Happy New year everyone

It is with some pride that I can finally go live with an announcement about CommunityLend in Canada, and that we will be launching the service in early 2008.  [disclosure:  I am on the mangement team] More at StartupNorth.ca.  2007 was a long year, as we raised our funding, and organised the management team.  We are well on the way now, and looking forward to bringing you more milestones over the next while.  We will launch the blog towards the end of January 08, and thats where I will take the discussion on social lending. CommunityLend What is CommunityLend? CommunityLend … Continue reading CommunityLend funding, management team and Board announcement

I remain convinced until proven otherwise that Banks are going through a seismic shift following the American sub prime crisis.  The crisis will have profit impacts that drive product pricing and loan risk changes which will impact consumers over the next 2-3 years.  Consumer pain looms with banks to hike credit cost – Times Online Millions of people are set for their biggest ever financial hangover in the new year as the squeeze on money markets hits households across Brtitain. Powered by ScribeFire. Continue reading Consumer pain looms with banks to hike credit cost

SalesForce.com make a major coup in banking, with this CitiGroup contract.  Siebel (Oracle) must really feel this, above the rest.  When we see SalesForce, with their web based, collaborative and frankly simpler application, making inroads like this, its an indication of industry changing moves.  Finextra: Salesforce.com reports Citigroup deal He said Citibank selected the Salesforce.com technology over every other major CRM package, including those offered by Oracle, SAP and Microsoft. The bank will become the vendor’s fifth largest customer with more than 25,000 subscribers. The vendor’s other big clients include US investment bank Merrill Lynch which earlier this year ordered … Continue reading SalesForce.com make a major coup in banking, with CitiGroup deal

So we have all the main expected players having reported in Canada now, with a projection on National Bank. As predicted it exceeds $2bn. There has been nothing like this since in size since the 80’s real estate losses, which were driven by high interest rates. This situation in 2007, however is driven purely by bad lending practices, and risk assessment. RBC $ 360M CIBC $ 753M (includes write down from 2nd Qtr) BMO $ 320M BNS $ 190M National $ 500M (projected) $2,123M Other significant losses include the Natural gas commodity speculation $700M (BMO). Note the Banks are able … Continue reading Canadian Banks write off $2.1Bn in US Sub Prime mortgages

Some interesting thoughts here on the notion of creativity and current organisation structures. Conclusion:  Typical Bank organisation structures are not set up to effectively deliver on the needs of customers.  Irving Wladawsky-Berger: Some Thoughts on Multidisciplinary Innovation A mismatch thus exists between the way companies are organized for the effective operations of their current offerings, and the emerging needs of their customers and the marketplace in general. ….. Perhaps the very notion of a hierarchic organization is an outmoded concept, a remnant of the industrial economy of the past hundred years.  Perhaps it’s not the way to organize work in … Continue reading Innovation, departments, and current organisation don’t mix well

CIBC leads the way in Canada, with a large writedown, between $300M, and $500M, and so as predicted a couple of months back the Canadian Banks are all announcing or expected to announce losses associated with the US sub-prime crisis.  The exception is TD Bank.    Canadian Banks & Insurance Investors now know size of write-down at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce on US subprime exposure, and can pretty much assume Toronto-Dominion Bank doesn’t have any. Both banks announced Visa restructuring gains, with CM noting they’ll cover the CDO hit. But jury still out on Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of … Continue reading CIBC writes down sub+prime loss