Some strategic shifts amongst the ‘universal banks’ (HSBC, Citi, Lloyds, Bank of America, JP Morgan). The first is cost cutting. Global colonisers stage retreat to corporate banking | ft.com Increasingly, the heads of so-called universal banks – those that combine high street banking with corporate and investment banking – are deliberately shifting their focus away from foreign adventures in retail branches and on to corporate business instead. HSBC is not alone. Citigroup, its main global competitor, is busy pulling out of a host of retail markets where it is overstretched, such as Spain, Greece and Belgium, and refocusing on just … Continue reading Universal banks show beginning of shift away from retail to corporate

The US government has 800 data centres and one CIO.  He has set a target of shifting 25% of the government’s $80 billion in annual IT spending to cloud computing. The benefits are associated with cost savings.  These benefits are tempered with concerns about data security, and physical location of the servers within the US. Cloud Computing’s Tipping Point | InformationWeek There are few technology trends the U.S. government is embracing with such fervor as the cloud. In his Federal Cloud Computing Strategy report, published in February, federal CIO Vivek Kundra set a target of shifting 25% of the government’s … Continue reading Are Governments and Banks worrying about the wrong problems in the cloud?

The big debate at the moment is whether we are into another technological bubble.  This is fuelled by the valuations of FaceBook, Groupon and Twitter.  But there is a deeper issue, and this Bloomberg article by Ashlee Vance does a really good job at capturing it. His general thesis is the differentiation of foundational technologies and those that sit atop the foundational technologies.  He makes the point that there is nothing particularly new about FaceBook, Twitter and Groupon.  He notes that Groupons legacy for the world is cute emails. Worse, the smartest people in Silicon Valley are the mathematicians and … Continue reading Whats next after clicking ads?

More information today on the US NSTIC strategy.  (National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace).  http://www.nist.gov/nstic/ I was sceptical about the initial promise although who cannot appreciate the concept.  There is more NSTIC pdf in this doc just released.  The document is all about the benefits of being able to be known anywhere online and reduce passwords down to one password.  Those benefits are easy.  The core question remains as to how identity is proven by the Identity Provider (IDP).  The document says the right things here, but the devil remains in the details of how this will be achieved.  … Continue reading More on the NSTIC but still not enough on the policy for ID verification

The forecasts and predictions that Niall Ferguson was making last year are coming home to roost.  This is an early warning shot across the bows of the US lawmakers.  S&P kept the rating at AAA but the door is now open a crack for that to change.  S&P and the other rating agencies looked like Pollyanna lemmings before the credit crisis, so you can bet they will not let that happen again if they can avoid it. S&P cuts US credit outlook to ‘negative’ “We believe there is a material risk that US policymakers might not reach an agreement on … Continue reading US debt comes under negative scrutiny by S&P

The banking /credit crisis seems so long ago now when we look at the dates in the US Levin/ Coburn report … WALL STREET AND THE FINANCIAL CRISIS: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse pdf 5.5 MB …  but it is fascinating reading  – all 650  pages.  The American media have been all over the lack of regulatory overview of Wall Street, but I am more interested in the complete disregard for banking principles and good governance.  Blaming Wall Street is like blaming schools for bad kids.  This is a family problem, and when you read this section it is obviously wrong. … Continue reading First look – Wall Street and the Financial Crisis; Anatomy of a Financial Collapse

Payfone is an interesting new service and I like their security model.  They are able to take unique features of the phone from the SIM card and the phone itself to generate a unique fingerprint that is used in the security of the payment transactions.  This is similar to the methodology used by RSA for two factor authentication of online banking. But it is the more interesting that they have just received $19 million in funding, and will be using the Amercian Express Serve platform.  The details are outlined in this NY Times piece. The other investors in this $19 … Continue reading The payment space is heating up with mobile front and centre, but where are the Banks?

Digging a little deeper into the Commission report over lunch, and I am now coming to the funny bits.  The laudable objective on pages 123 – 124 is that one way to promote competitiveness is to smooth the account switching process between banks.  They note that very few people switch banks each year and speculate that future improvements would speed the process and encourage more people to switch banks. To encourage this, the tactics they suggest are as follows.  They are listed in increased ascendancy of humour factor: Greater transparency of each banks benefits over the other Mandate switch must … Continue reading Detailed look – UK Independent Commission on Banking proposal on account switching requires much deeper thought